Inclusive Community Based Research Group (ICBRG)

About us

The Inclusive Community Based Research Group (ICBRG) is a network of researchers with a shared passion for collaborative and inclusive research that benefits the community. The group supports staff and postgraduate research to work with community partners to conduct research that is accessible, inclusive, empowering and works to return research results in an accessible form. To find out more, please contact Dr Lyn Phillipson (lphillip@uow.edu.au).

People are much more likely to respond to a research approach which actually recognises that they have assets and skills and knowledge that they can share to make a difference in their own lives and in their own communities. 

I'm Dr Lyn Philipson. I'm an NHMRC ARC dementia fellow and I'm also the leader of the Inclusive Community-Based research group. 

We find in working with more marginalized or disadvantaged communities that relationships is really important so we tend to make relationships with people we meet with them lots of times and then we design different types of research methods that really tries to capture the voice of these types of group. 

This type of research is really important in trying to engage those people who are most at risk in our educational systems, in our social care systems, in our criminal justice systems and also in our health systems, so that we are building programs and understanding the experience of those programs from the perspectives of those groups. 

In our research we use what we call participatory research methods so we try and use methods that actually encourage the voice of the groups that we're working with, so that starts right from the very beginning. 

We believe that the research that we're doing and that the methods that we're developing really are the most effective ways of working with communities. We do work a little bit differently we're a community of practice so we're about sharing knowledge but we're also about sharing practical skills. 

If our research was to make a difference it would be through the inclusion and empowerment of vulnerable communities to create a more equitable society.

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Activities include:

  • Monthly meetings - We gather to build our research ‘community of practice’. We are committed to providing a safe space to share research ideas and ways of working and to build relationships with one another and our community partners.
  • Workshops and retreats - are used to support training and mentoring based on the wants and needs of the group
  • End of year showcase - At the end of the year we intend to celebrate and acknowledge our learnings and successes with a special focus on our research impact and what we have learnt about ways of working with our community partners. 

Projects

Talking Mats- An inclusive research tool for people with Dementia
Dr Lyn Phillipson is an NHMRC-ARC Dementia Fellow investigating the outcomes and experiences of people with dementia who are recipients of Home Care Packages. She is also an accredited Talking Mats trainer and has received an IRT Research Foundation grant to explore the use of Talking Mats to aid care planning and assess social care-related outcomes for home care package recipients. 

Social science researcher perspectives of research engagement and impact
Researchers in the social sciences who are engaged in research with marginalised, vulnerable or hard to reach communities offer a unique perspective of research engagement and impact. In the current climate of increasing accountability for research impact, understanding these perspectives is critical for engaging and supporting researchers to undertake and document their research in such a way that meets these requirements. This study utilises a qualitative design to explore the perspectives of social science researchers at the University of Wollongong. The results of this study are helping to inform the UOWs approach to supporting staff as they respond to these new research impact requirements.