Lived Experience Leadership in Inclusive Research
Tyra Buteux, Rachel High, Ruby Nankivell, Hannah Zsigoszki, Eleanor Watson, Raffaella Cresciani, Ariella Traurig, Anna Jones, Karen R. Fisher, Sally RobinsonABSTRACT
Background and Aims
Previous research has shown that it is important that community researchers are involved in research on topics that affect them. Our article shows that it is also important that community researchers have leadership roles in these projects.
Methods
We present two leadership stories from community researchers on a project about preventing and addressing everyday harm in the lives of people with cognitive disability. We think about how community researcher leadership in these stories positively changed the way we worked inside and outside our research project. To do the research, we used records from our team meetings and recorded our conversations as we thought about these ideas together (programme data).
Results
This article shows that when community researchers take a lead in inclusive research projects, there are many benefits to the culture, organisation and processes in the project.
Conclusion
The benefits to research projects from inclusive leadership help quality of the research and also the research team members. The benefits also spread beyond the project, shaping how people work in other areas of their professional lives.