2pm-4pm, 5th November 2025

REACH Space, King’s College London

Our first PhD Participatory Research Network session brought together around 25 PhD students from King’s College London, Queen Mary University of London, and Imperial College London. This session was co-facilitated by PhD students Emma Hayashibara (QMUL) and Cheyenne Contreras (KCL).

We kicked off the session with an icebreaker wall, where everyone added a post-it note with their name, institution, and research area.

Setting the Scene

We began the session with an introduction to the purpose of the network, why it was established, and some simple housekeeping and ground rules to ensure a safe, respectful, and collaborative space.

Emma shared that the network grew out of her own experience as a PhD student conducting participatory research. While participatory approaches are encouraged, she found that existing resources do not consider specific realities and challenges faced by PhD students. To address this gap, the PhD Participatory Research Network was created with support from the Student Led Activity Fund (SLAF) by the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (LISS DTP).

As a network, we aim to:

• Connect PhD students across disciplines and institutions who are interested in or conducting participatory research.
• Provide a safe, collaborative space to share challenges and practical solutions.
• Learn from each other’s approaches and experiences.
• Explore how participatory values can be meaningfully embedded in PhD-level projects.

Each month, we’ll meet to focus on themes in participatory research. We will combine workshops, peer discussions, and guest speakers. Together, we aim to build a collective toolkit of resources and guidance by PhD students, for PhD students.

We also set some ground rules for the network:

• Please note down any ideas, reflections, or suggestions during the session – we aim to include all contributions in our collective toolkit of resources and guidance.
• This is a safe and respectful space for all PGRs.
• Consent: All contributions will be anonymised.
• Confidentiality: Please do not share any identifiable information outside the session.
• Everyone is equal here regardless of experience with participatory research.
• Any feedback, concerns or suggestions can be shared with Emma.

Key discussion points

Our first discussion focused on the questions: “What brings you here today?”, “What do you hope to get out of this network?

We reflected on shared challenges:

• Building independent participatory projects without established research groups.
• Navigating ethics processes and supervisory expectations that do not always align with participatory approaches (e.g., the need for research questions).
• Facing power imbalances between PhD students, PIs, and community partners.
• The lack of practical, PhD-specific training on how to actually do participatory research (e.g., how do we actually set up a lived experience panel?)

There was a strong sense that mainstream academic structures often do not fit participatory research, and vice-versa.

Rethinking what’s possible & working together

Our discussion soon turned to what could be done differently. We explored ideas such as:

• Challenging the need for rigid research questions.
• Rethinking ethics processes and imagining a form of “counter-ethics”.
• Introducing prompts in response to ethics applications e.g., “I wish you could have asked this”

There was a sense of hope and empowerment in the room. The session highlighted how much brain power exists when we bring diverse perspectives together. 

We also ran a Mentimeter activity asking members what participatory research means to them.

Shaping the future of our network together

While the session was initially planned to focus on introductions and principles of participatory research, the discussion shifted towards the future of the network itself.

Network members shared ideas about:

• How we can stay connected and continue exchanging knowledge in between sessions.
• Ways to make the network more accessible.
• Plans for the toolkit launch.
• Structuring sessions to make our network as PhD-student-led and collaborative as possible

Reflections from session 1

• Bringing PhD students together from different disciplines and institutions was empowering and energising.
• The session also highlighted the complexity of participatory research, particularly at the PhD level.
• The session reaffirmed why this network is needed, and to develop a sense of belonging for PhDs in participatory research.

Registration is now open for Session 2 of the PhD Participatory Research Network!

Our next session will be held on 3rd December, from 2-4 pm, in Room 1.62, Franklin Wilkins Building, King’s College London. 

We are excited to welcome guest speaker Kate Fifield, a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London, who will share the barriers and successes she encountered while integrating PPI into her PhD feasibility study on digital assessment technology for young adults with a rare genetic disease.

Come and join fellow PhD students to explore how participatory values can be embedded in PhD-level research!

Register here:

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