School of Social and Political Science

Research Focus

The research team is focused on 3 main aims:

  1. Our people,
  2. Enabling innovation in research and teaching, and
  3. Promoting knowledge exchange and impact

People

Expansion and growth of the team includes the appointments of colleagues to a range of organisations including:

  • the Bruce and John Usher Chair of Public Health
  • the Centenary Chair in Social Work
  • Chair in Nursing Studies.

The commitment to equality and diversity across the life of the UoA; gender-focused processes of securing Athena Swan accreditation have been used to catalyse efforts to address other dimensions of inequality, including via initiatives focused on LGBT+, ethnicity, and widening participation of underrepresented groups.

Enabling innovation in research and teaching

Enabling and sustaining inclusive and participatory research centres, networks and clusters has long been central to our ability to promote interdisciplinarity, collaboration and innovation.

Collaborations include:

  • Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR),
  • Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society
  • Edinburgh Centre for Research on the Experience of Dementia
  • Group for Research on Inequalities and Tobacco.

International research is being driven by our leading roles in new collaborations including the

  • International Network for the Study of Domestic Homicides (Devaney),
  • a Global Mental Health network to enhance inter-disciplinary inquiry and collaboration across the University (Jain) and
  • the Global Refugee Health Research Network (Palattiyil).

 

Explorations in methodological innovation include work via:

  • Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry (Wyatt);
  • participatory approaches to examining intersectional inequalities in access to health (Kapilashrami)
  • qualitative data analysis with people living with dementia (Clarke, Wilkinson),
  • inquiry in to the meanings of self-harm in young people (Chandler),
  • engaging men in groupwork to address their sexual offeding (Mullins, Kirkwood), and
  • exploring the lived experiences of people suffering the consequences of alcohol-related harm via photovoice (Rhynas, Holloway).

The team also contributes to key initiatives in teaching and research training, including

  • the Edinburgh Q-Step Centre
  • AQMEN’s data science training for social research,
  • Research Training Centre in SPS and the
  • Scottish Graduate School of Social Science

Promoting knowledge exchange and impact

Understanding the role of KE, the implications of the impacts agenda, and the relationships and pathways between evidence, policy and practice, constitute central foci of our substantive research, explored particularly via the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE).

We have a very strong track record of co-production of research with partners, including with civil society organisations and practitioners (as in the Centre for Homeless and Inclusion Health with Cyrenians and the Access Practice, a homelessness GP practice in Edinburgh), with service users and experts by experience (Roesch-Marsh with refugee and migrant families in collaboration with Multi Cultural Family Base) and with communities (de Andrade’s work in developing an asset-based indicator framework, co-designed with BME groups in Glasgow’s South Side).