Over the past two years (2024–2025), the Group has strengthened its position as a leading hub for critical social policy scholarship by embedding the social harm perspective across research, teaching, and public engagement. Key highlights from the past two years include:
- Flagship events such as Global Billionaires and Geographical Justice keynote by Professor Danny Dorling (University of Oxford), attracting over 100 international participants and released as a podcast on YouTube and Spotify.
- A Postgraduate Research Symposium in Bristol, developed with the South West Doctoral Training Partnership, bringing together 30 doctoral students from eight universities.
- A Regional Policy Workshop in Durham, co-hosted with the Global Centre for Contextual Safeguarding, exploring youth experiences of social harm.
- The Social Harm Student Essay Competition, which drew submissions from 32 countries, with winning essays from Glasgow and Malawi now being prepared for publication in Justice, Power and Resistance journal.
- The development of curated teaching resources with the Justice, Power and Resistance journal, embedding social harm into curricula worldwide.
The new funding will enable the Group to consolidate its achievements and scale up its reach, policy influence, and public engagement through a cost-effective hybrid model. Planned activities for 2026–2027 include:
- An Annual Social Harm lecture series, exploring new harms arising from far-right populism and neoliberal retrenchment, with potential media partnerships such as The Guardian Long Read and OpenDemocracy.
- A series of Policy Labs with PolicyBristol, focusing on polycrisis and prevention and the criminalisation of marginalised groups, producing cross-sector harm prevention briefings.
- Student and early-career researcher development, including an expanded Student Prize Series and a second Postgraduate Research Symposium, with micro-bursaries for early-career-led workshops.
- Teaching and open access outputs, including a free global teaching pack and contributions to SPA blogs, Social Policy Review, and online events.
- Partnership building, deepening collaboration with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to explore poverty, inequality, and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
Dr Nasrul Ismail, a founding member of the Social Harm Policy Group, commented: "This renewal recognises the growing influence of social harm scholarship. Over the past two years, we have built a national and international community of researchers and practitioners committed to understanding and preventing harm in all its forms. This next phase will enable us to lead vital conversations, both in the UK and globally, on inequality, marginalisation, and harm."