The Centre is led by Dr Catherine Dodds. Staff members and doctoral students  undertake applied and theoretical research relating to some of our most pressing health and social care issues at national regional and international levels. We specialise in innovative and impactful research, evaluation, advisory support, policy engagement and research skills development. Our Centre members are from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including social policy, social work, gerontology, social care, socio-legal studies, disability studies, sociology and psychology and we lead on research-led teaching across a number of programmes (particularly in Social Policy, Social Research Methods, Social Work and Public Policy) in the School for Policy Studies.  

The intersectional nature of experience among people in minoritised groups is of particular interest. Exploring systems as well as lived experience, our work is oriented around connected social determinants such as: gender, ethnicity, class, migration, geography, lifecourse stage, employment structures, housing tenure, poverty, sexuality, and disability, among others. To this end we work closely with members of many other Research Centres in our School, particularly the Norah Fry Center for Disability Studies. 

Our commitment to co-production and collaboration rests on strong partnerships across the University of Bristol, global academic institutions, and local councils in our region. Our work is frequently embedded within and undertaken alongside diverse voluntary organisations and initiatives of different sizes and scopes, such as Age UK; Bristol HIV Fast Track City; Housing LIN and Bristol Community Meals (Meals on Wheels). 

Find out more about our research projects and view our postgraduate profiles. 

Our principles  

The following principles guide our approach to research and engagement that improves wellbeing, health and social care for diverse groups and entire populations:  

1. Our efforts are strongly aligned with partner movements and organisations that seek to identify and address health and social care inequality. We integrate and apply theoretical understandings of the social, political and commercial determinants of health and wellbeing throughout our work.
2. Our approaches to research are guided by the values of co-production wherever possible, which acknowledges and centres the expertise of those with lived experience alongside academic practice; and at all times our ethics recognise and actively address the presence and flow of power in research encounters
3. We work, where appropriate, to inform organisational and government policy and service provision. We recognise and seek to help resolve some of the key challenges of systems integration in a public service context.