Members

Professor Bryer is highly published and conducts extensive research in the areas of public participation and collaboration across segments of society, including government, non-profit, private, faith-based, and voluntary sectors. He has won multiple awards for his research, teaching, and service. In 2015, he was granted a Fulbright Core Scholar award to conduct research in Lithuania from 2015-2017, and he is currently a Fulbright Specialist, which will include work in Russia. He maintains an affiliation at Kaunas University of Technology in Lithuania as Project Chief Researcher, leading research on non-economic factors of emigration.  He is the author or editor of four books:  Higher education beyond Job Creation: Universities, Citizenship, and Community (2014); National Service and Volunteerism: Achieving Impact in Our Communities (2015); Social Media for Government: Theory and Practice (2016); Poor Participation: Fighting the Wars on Poverty and Impoverished Citizenship (2018). 

On leaving home in St Helens, John started his working career in production management and research at Wedgwood in the Potteries later getting ordained as an Anglican priest in 1979.

During his ministry in the West Midlands, John started several innovative projects and led the award-winning ‘Crossing at St. Paul’s, Walsall’ development, a £2.5million project to transform a large Grade 2 listed Victorian church building to a multi-use social enterprise. He was a trustee of Age Concern and a founder director of a youth enterprise scheme.

John was a visiting lecturer in Theology at Walsall College and lectured in Anglican and Catholic Colleges on Urban Mission. He chaired a number of boards including Walsall’s innovative SRB Partnership Board, the Business in the Community Neighbourhood Partnership, a local School Governors and was a trustee of the New Art Gallery Development Trust.

He worked later as the Regional Development Manager for the Princes Trust Action in the West Midlands moving on to become the Hospice Development Manager in Walsall for the NHS Primary Care Trust. This was whilst he was a ministry team member in the Halesowen Team ministry.

John is a Christian social entrepreneur, a broadcaster, a Home Office consultant, a trustee of the John Moores Foundation, Joint Chair of West Lancs CVS, and a former local Councillor in West Lancs. Having previously been the lead on the anti-poverty strategies for Liverpool Diocese he is now a Missional priest in Knowsley Deanery working currently as Interim Minister at Huyton Parish Church.

Professor Michael Hardman is Chair of Urban Sustainability at the University of Salford. Mike is an interdisciplinary researcher interested in urban sustainability and has published widely on topics from guerrilla gardening to urban agriculture and green infrastructure. His work is global in nature, with projects in the likes of Africa, North America, Europe and elsewhere, focussing on themes from the potential to upscale radical greening initiatives, to large-scale urban farming. This work has ranged from ethnographic work with green activists to exploring the impact of pioneering sustainability schemes in cities. Mike has obtained funding from charities, industrial partners and global bodies for this work, with recent projects funded by the likes of Horizon Europe to the British Science Association / Wellcome Trust and beyond. He also holds a number of senior editor roles, external advisory roles and regularly speaks in the media on urban sustainability.

Nicky has held senior leadership roles in the third sector throughout her career which spans over thirty years, during which she has developed and directed mental health services at both regional and national level.   Her areas of interest include peer support in mental health,  computerised therapies for the treatment of anxiety and depression and multi modal practice as a way of supporting individuals with multiple needs.  More recently she has led the development of a global alliance of not for profit organisations focused on the treatment and management of common mental health problems and takes a lead on research and innovation.

Dr Marisa de Andrade is a Senior Lecturer in Health, Science and Society at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Health in Social Sciences. She uses “traditional” and (post)-qualitative methodologies to situate arts at the helm of strategic decision-making across multiple sectors including health and social care, employability, education and social justice. Marisa is Programme Director for the MSc by Research in Health Humanities and Arts;  Co-Director of the Centre for Creative-Relational Inquiry; Co-Director at the The Binks Hub; and Programme Director of the PhD Health in Social Sciences. Marisa is also a Board Director for Youth Theatre Arts Scotland (YTAS). She was Joint Winner of the 2023 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry Book Award for Public Health, Humanities and Magical Realism: A Creative-Relational Approach to Researching Human Experience, Routledge. Marisa has received several grants as Principle Investigator from funders including the NHS, Cancer Research UK, ESCR, AHRC and the Scottish Government amongst others. She is currently (2024-2027) Project Lead on a £2.5 million UKRI consortium award for REALITIES in Health Disparities: Researching Evidence-based Alternatives in Living, Imaginative, Traumatised, Integrated, Embodied Systems.

Dr Katy Goldstraw is passionate about creative and participatory approaches to learning. Katy specialises in participatory arts-based research methods to include and empower the voices of previously unheard communities within her research.

Katy is a senior lecturer in Health and Social Care at Staffordshire University and works in an independent capacity with the APLE Collective, an anti-poverty collective led by people with lived experience. Katy has worked with members of the voluntary and community sector to co-produce a Sustainable Livelihoods Resource Book. This resource book is a toolkit that VCS organisations can use to facilitate an assets based organisational evaluation. She has worked in higher education and the Voluntary Sector throughout her career. A fellow of the higher education Academy and the Royal Society of Arts; Katy has published extensively on topics including VCS assets, citizens voice, and anti-poverty participatory approaches.