Icreates

Research with everyday people is important for informing how services such as health, education and social care, can better support children, young people and families. Yet, research with people can often start from a very limited idea about what it means to be human. Research with people can also exclude a wide range of experiences, such as adults who experience a deep connectedness with others and the natural world; or children’s experiences of invisible companions. These living experiences of everyday people may carry a potential to inform how we understand and re-envision the world, supporting positive social transformation. As we face a collective crisis in terms of the social and natural world, never has it been more important to explore the nature of who we are.

The Icreates Research Unit is a University-led initiative that aims to centralise research with everyday people in the areas of exploring the nature of self, consciousness and social transformation. Icreates has a global membership of academics, researchers, practitioners and everyday people. Together we explore what it means to be human through multidisciplinary lenses, centralising the living experiences of everyday people in our research. We achieve this through using creative, collaborative and traditional approaches to enquiry.

Scientists and researchers across disciplines such as neuroscience, health, linguistics and philosophy are starting to recognise the importance for involving everyday people in research which explores what it means to be human and the interconnectivity of all life on the planet. Icreates provides a dynamic research space to enable new dimensions of research into the exploration of what it means to be human for social transformation.

Members

• Dr Donna Thomas, Co-director
• Professor Sarah Durston, Co-director
• Professor Kate Adams, Associate Professor
• Professor Aidan Worsely, Associate Professor
• Kirsty Allan, Senior Research Assistant
• Saima Sharif, Senior Lecturer