Improving community partnerships in local policy through enhanced participation for marginalised groups.

This project aims to evaluate community participation in UK local policy. It will focus on community safety
partnerships, with particular attention to the inclusion of BAME and other marginalised groups. It will use
focus groups and workshops to collect data from two ethnically diverse populations in South London and
Southampton. This will inform analysis of the extent of participation and its interrelation with how local
policy is formulated and perceived. The project will examine whether there may be more effective ways
to engage marginalised communities and thereby strengthen the impact and effectiveness of policy
initiatives. Provisional project partners will include the Tavistock Institute and regional safer community
partnerships in Lambeth, Croydon and Southampton. In addition to the PhD thesis, findings will be used
to produce policy briefing documents to be disseminated to policy makers and the wider public via
collaborative events with project partners.
My professional experience in community participation and academic track record in discourse analysis
and social cohesion uniquely positions me to bring an interdisciplinary approach to this project.
Therefore, I am aptly skilled to address marginalisation and community safety, by applying theory and
practice together to contemporary policy as further outlined in the project proposal.