IVR hosted a webinar exploring volunteering and inequalities; here are the position statements from each of the panellists
Peter Beresford, OBE is Visiting Professor at the University of East Anglia, Co-Chair of Shaping our Lives, and Emeritus Professor at Brunel University London and Essex University. He has a longstanding interest in user and public participa- tion as activist, service user, researcher, educator, and through involvement in policy development. His latest book is Inclusive Ideology, Policy Press 2021.
Gary Blake has been working and volunteering in the Third Sector for nearly 30 years. For the past ten years he has been working at Voluntary Action Leeds (VAL) where he currently works as Social Action Manager. Prior to this he worked as a researcher for Community Links in London and as a Community Development Manager for Barton Hill Settlement in Bristol. Gary has extensive experience of doing research around volunteering, previously managed a project that awarded a national award for its work around community cohesion and has more than twenty years’ experience of delivering Equality & Diversity training.
Sarah Hanson is a Lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia. Sarah's research interests are around inequalities and marginalisation and taking an asset-based approach to community health improvement.
Karen (Hei Wan) Mak is a Research Fellow in Quantitative Social Science in the Department of Behavioural Science & Health at University College London. Her research focuses on the association between arts and cultural community engagement and wellbeing, as well as the barriers and enablers to engagement. Karen is a co-Investigator on an ESRC-grant on communities and wellbeing (WELLCOMM) and is also involved in the UCL COVID-19 Social Study. She has been named a World Economic Forum Global Shaper.
Bridget Robinson is Operational Manager for Black Health Initiative (BHI) in Leeds. She has worked for BHI for 11 years. Initially as a volunteer and then Women’s Health and Wellbeing sessional worker and coordinator before progressing to her current role overseeing all of BHI’s projects and being a bridge between the community and partner organisations.
Kris Southby is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Health Promotion Research. He works across the breadth of CHPR’s research portfolio and has extensive experience of qualitative methods and desk-based research. Kris’ research broadly focusses on the role of the voluntary sector and community sector in supporting health and wellbeing of individuals and communities. He has a particular interest in the experience of adults with a learning disability.