Community Education Research Group (CERG)

PI: Professor John S Young; Co-I: Ms Veena Bumma-Dykes, Ms Samantha Logan, Ms Marie Marron, Ms Alison Ni Charraighe, Dr Andie Reynolds, Ms Annie Rigby, Ms Midge Ryall.

This ESPRC-funded research project aims to identify effective methods for key stakeholders, including young people, to share information and best practices in early intervention to enhance mental health and wellbeing outcomes for young people in Gateshead, North East England.

PI: Sarah Ward

This ESRC Impact Acceleration Award is a collaboration with Scottish Government policy and analysis colleagues to create a measurement framework on policy for the prevention of violence against women and girls.

PI: Sarah Ward

This small pilot project explored and tested the generative processes and practices of speculative fiction writing about climate futures, to scaffold the steps required to support 'radical imagination' of possible futures for and with young adult learners. 

Consultant: Sarah Ward; Collaborators: Dr Anneke Brock and Gideon Vasser (HAN University)

A research consultancy project with HAN University in Nijmegen to explore a national evaluation of Asset based Community Development projects across the Netherlands.

PIs: Sarah Ward and Maureen McBride (University of Glasgow)

Young people from disadvantaged communities face multiple social and economic barriers but are also disadvantaged in their participation as activists for social change. This project explored what supports and hinders youth activists as they take action for change in their communities. This was a British Academy Network Seed Grant funded project.

Community centres of the future

This report reimagines how community centres can evolve to become more inclusive, resilient, and responsive spaces that meet the changing social, cultural, and wellbeing needs of local communities.

Bynner, C., Gilgannon, J., Van Aanholt, J. & Gibson-Tjebbes, L., 8 Aug 2025, The University of Edinburgh. 

• Project Report - Community Centres of the Future

Community Education, Populism and Deliberative Democracy’

"Community Education, Populism and Deliberative Democracy," published in Concept (Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2025), discusses how community education can address contemporary challenges from populism, exploring how educators engage with communities to build critical understanding and alternative strategies against far-right movements and prejudice.

Fraser, G, (2025), ‘Community Education, Populism and Deliberative Democracy’, in Concept, Vol. 16 No. 1 (2025): Spring.

• Community Education, Populism and Deliberative Democracy

Education, Sustainability and Social Justice: Lessons for Capability Development and Expansion of Opportunities for Authorship from the Global South (Part 1)

Editors: Fenella Somerville (University of the Free State, South Africa) and Sarah Ward

This special issue of the Journal of Human Development & Capabilities is Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 published Feb 2026). The issue explores the role of education in understanding and confronting the planetary crisis, and what this means in terms of capability development and addressing issues of inequality as well as social and ecological (in)justice. The issue focuses on the lessons we can learn from the global South scholars towards more equitable and just ways of knowing, being and doing.

Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, 26(4), 517–535.

• Education, Sustainability and Social Justice: Lessons for Capability Development and Expansion of Opportunities for Authorship from the Global South (Part 1) 

‘Knowing’ the system: Public administration and informality during COVID-19

This paper offers valuable insights into how people relied on informal knowledge and relationships to navigate public systems during COVID-19, highlighting lessons community educators can use to strengthen trust, access, and equitable support in their own practice.

•  ‘Knowing’ the system: Public administration and informality during COVID-19 

From occupational to organisational professionalism: Exploring the changing nature of professionalism in community learning and development (1975–2019)

Author: Gary Fraser

This article draws upon Julia Evetts concepts of occupational and organisational professionalism to discuss the shift in the model of professionalism within the field of Community Learning and Development (CLD) in Scotland from 1975 to 2019.

• Read 'From occupational to organisational professionalism...'

Post-Covid youth work and mental wellbeing of young people across Scotland and England

Authors: Andie Reynolds, Alison Ni Charraighe

This article seeks to contribute to the debate about the current and future support needs of young people (aged 11-25) across Scotland and England who are experiencing mental distress in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. In doing so, it focuses on the profession that works specifically with this age range – youth work - and youth work practice across Scotland and England, and then examines the challenges and opportunities for the profession. It concludes that youth work, and youth workers, are well placed to provide much needed initial mental health support to young people, but that the profession urgently needs the UK and Scottish Governments to financially (re)invest in its infrastructure to deliver this provision.

• Read 'Post-Covid youth work and mental wellbeing of young people across Scotland and England'

Evaluating youth empowerment in neighbourhood settings: applying the capabilities 3C model to evidence and extend the social justice outcomes of youth work in Scotland

Authors: Sarah Ward, Maureen McBride and Nicholas Watson

This paper in the Journal of Youth Studies examines how collective capabilities at a neighbourhood level can support youth voice and empowerment. By applying Ibrahim’s 3C collective capabilities model in a new context with young people, we propose that it offers a useful framework to demonstrate the existing value and extend the social justice potential of youth work practice.

• Evaluating youth empowerment in neighbourhood settings

Using theory-based evaluation to understand what works in asset-based community Development

Author: Sarah Ward

Asset-based community development (ABCD) has become a popular approach to community work, with the claim that it can support high poverty communities to drive the process of community development. Yet there is little detailed evidence on the efficacy of the ABCD model, and how this relates to the political, economic, and social context in which the intervention is located. This article in the Community Development Journal presents research from a community case study in Scotland to explore how Theory-Based Evaluation can clarify ABCD’s hypothesis for change.

• Using theory-based evaluation to understand what works in asset-based community Development

Building a capabilities framework with children and young people: An illustrated example

Authors: Sarah Ward, Claire Bynner and Victoria Bianchi

This chapter explores the creation of a capabilities research model to support young people to articulate their neighbourhood priorities for change, drawing on creative arts and youth work practice.

• Building a capabilities framework with children and young people: An illustrated example

Community Development and the Austerity Decade (2010-19)

The article discusses how community development in local government across the UK was transformed during the austerity decade (2010–2019). The author, Gary Fraser, argues that despite progressive rhetoric like "community empowerment," the agenda was also shaped by managing the fiscal crisis of the state through measures such as outsourcing and asset transfer of public services.

Fraser, G, (2020), ‘Community Development and the Austerity Decade (2010-19)’, in, ‘Concept’, Vol. 11, No 1, Spring 2020.

• Community Development and the Austerity Decade (2010-19)

Foucault, Governmentality Theory and Neoliberal Community Development

"Foucault, Governmentality Theory and Neoliberal Community Development," published in the Community Development Journal, applies Foucault's concept of governmentality to understand how neoliberal ideas shape modern community development, focusing on self-governance, market logic, and individual responsibility in policy, contrasting it with earlier transformative community work. The work explores how power operates through shaping individual subjects rather than direct coercion, influencing policy and citizen behaviour.

Fraser, G, (2018), ‘Foucault, Governmentality Theory and Neoliberal Community Development’, in, ‘Community Development Journal’, December 2018. 

• Foucault, Governmentality Theory and Neoliberal Community Development