At our annual research showcase in 2026 we were treated to presentations from each of our six research themes. CIRCLE’s Co-Director Professor Liam Foster opened the event by noting that CIRCLE is 20 years old, and highlighted this achievement by wishing its original Director, Professor Emeritus Sue Yeandle a ‘Happy Birthday!’.
Co-Developing a Responsible AI Research Agenda with People Living with Chronic Conditions
Dr Asra Aslam introduced the Care and Tech team and provided an overview of the three participatory research methods which the theme employed in its research:
- An online agenda setting workshop with people with lived experience, which led to eight emerging themes and a co-produced ‘wish list’ for responsible AI.
- A multi-stakeholder roundtable with technology developers, policymakers, Local Authorities, and practitioners. During the roundtables, stakeholders converged on three groups that must be engaged together for a technology to be adopted and sustained: the end user, care teams, and the wider system (commissioners).
- A guided, hands-on Lego Serious Play workshop, aiming to get a fuller narrative of daily technology use. Led by Dr Stevienna de Saille, she explained how this method is used to get to grips with what makes people cared for? The outputs take the shape of illustrations produced while the conversation between participants was developing.
Using a combination of these outputs, the theme will be applying for funding to further explore the use of AI by people living with chronic conditions.
Organising Care in Financialised Times
Dr Grace Whitfield introduced the Organising Care, Labour and Employment theme and the research interests of its members which include:
- Working conditions in paid care and impact of low pay and insecure jobs
- Challenges of balancing employment with caring responsibilities
- Collective action and resistance - from trade union organising to community activism
- Reimagining how care, labour, and employment can be organised in ways that support both those who provide care and who use care services
Grace then gave an overview of the theme’s current research activity, ‘Financialising care: investment, risk and the assetisation of supported housing in the UK’, which aims to identify how globally mobile capital becomes embedded in local care systems, how valuation practices shape care delivery, and how risk is distributed across organisations, workers, and care users.
This project came about after the team identified a research gap in the extent to which financial restructuring is leading to the transformation of supported housing and care provision. Grace explained an ambitious set of scoping reviews, workshops and outputs which could come from this project, so keep an eye on our channels for updates in the future!
Reflecting on how the team is working together, Grace highlighted how enjoyable it was to get to know each member’s research interests and how important it was to work with researchers who have complementary expertise.
Working in partnership to facilitate knowledge exchange for the South Yorkshire Child Poverty Action Plan
Becky Driscoll looked back on the origins of the Children, Young People & Families theme’s current research, which emerged from a stakeholder workshop in October 2025 entitled ‘Developing Sheffield priorities & collaborative relationships’. From the workshop, child poverty emerged as a clear cross-cutting priority.
The theme collaborated with Save the Children and Sheffield Hallam University to apply for additional funding which allowed for extra research capacity, involvement of children and young people in the research, and the development of an action plan. Following involvement at the Dream Big South Yorkshire event and further workshop in June 2026, the team then collaborated with their project partners and produced a research report, entitled ‘Research evidence to inform the development of the South Yorkshire child poverty action plan’.
Becky then showed us some event pictures of the Dream Big South Yorkshire event and reflected on the successes and challenges of the project, noting the efforts of researcher Dr Jonathan Herbert who joined the team thanks to their successful funding application.
Building a Research Community: Early Reflections from Launching the Reimagining Community-Based Mental Health Care Theme
Dr Maria Teresa Ferazzoli shared her reflections on her theme, which was launched in June this year.
Since 2024 Maria Teresa has brought people together to build strategies for Mental Health research using the IMPACT networks model as inspiration. She developed and led an IMPACT Network on Data in Mental Health in 2025, collaborating with people with lived experience of accessing or working in mental health services.
Reflecting on how she has built a research community, Maria Teresa shared some of her most valuable learnings:
- Start from shared problems, not academic questions
- Value different forms of expertise
- Provide structure for discussion
- Create an accessible environment
- Support people to feel that their knowledge counts.
The CIRCLE Mental Health theme was launched in June 2026, and attended by people with lived experience, community and voluntary organisations, practitioners, policy and system colleagues and researchers, continuing Maria Teresa’s commitment to co-production in research from the very beginning. Attendees participated in discussions led by Dr Kamal Birdi, using the ‘CLEAR IDEAS collaborative innovation model’, which helps identify shared priorities for research, practice and policy.
Maria Teresa then explained some of the emerging project ideas following the launch event. A post-event briefing will be available soon - keep checking our webpages (and sign up to our newsletter through the Centre for Care website!).
Care practices
All attendees engaged in a fruitful discussion on the emerging aims and research questions with theme co-leads Dr Louis Stokes and Dr Bryony Waters-Harvey. We look forward to seeing this theme develop as there were many excellent suggestions put forward by the wider CIRCLE team!
Care-ful theorising, theorising care: the special issue project of the Theorising Care team
Theme co-lead Ella Monkcom provided an update on how the Theorising Care theme is developing. Since its conception, the team have met regularly for reading groups, which led to the development of a special issue proposal for the Sociology of Health & Illness journal. The team has just been given the green light from the journal to put together an open call for papers for the special issue this autumn; keep an eye on our website for more details on this soon.
Finally, Co-Director Professor Nathan Hughes closed the Showcase, commenting on the fantastic forward momentum of all CIRCLE themes.
