Examples of development opportunities for peer researchers

As well as offering training, it's helpful to provide a range of opportunities for peer researchers to develop skills. We've given some examples here, which will hopefully give you some useful ideas. Some of these relate to research, and others are more general.

• Delivering presentations about Migration Yorkshire’s research, for example at research dissemination meetings with for local authorities, and other strategic migration partnerships, at a Refugee Integration Yorkshire and Humber Board meeting, at the Yorkshire and Humber migration research network, and at external events and conferences.
• Contributing to research reports: there have been some challenges in giving researchers the opportunity to meaningfully contribute to research reports, where the main analysis and writing up was undertaken by a research manager or research partners. For Migration Yorkshire’s ‘Living the weathers and other stories’ report researchers had the chance to write some of the text, as ‘reflections’ and/or reflexive biographies. This enabled the researchers to be acknowledged in a written publication - useful evidence for CVs and future job applications. Researchers have contributed similar ‘reflections’ to our research partner IPPR’s ‘social connection’ toolkit.  Researchers also wrote detailed case biographies describing refugees’ housing pathways, for research undertaken by the University of Huddersfield. As researchers’ skills develop further we’d hope to enable greater involvement in analysis and writing.
• Coordinating an external research network: one of the Community Researchers coordinates the Yorkshire and Humber postgraduate migration research network. This involves organising and hosting monthly discussion meetings, sometimes with an external speaker, and managing the network administration.

• Coordinating and participating in a research club: a fortnightly lunchtime session where researchers present their written summaries of externally produced research and discuss the findings with colleagues. The sessions are organised and chaired by Peer Researchers. The written summaries form part of the Migration Yorkshire migration research database.

• Blog writing: the researchers have all written blogs reflecting on an aspect of their experience as a Peer or Community Researcher – these are published in ‘Research Corner’ on the Migration Yorkshire website.

• Facilitating discussion groups at events: for example at the Yorkshire and Humber Refugee Integration Forum researchers facilitated discussions on themes from research they were involved in.

• Participating in study visits to research partners’ institutions, which included opportunities to present research findings, attend lectures and seminars, and discuss Migration Yorkshire’s work.
• Following personal interests for example researchers have been enabled to attend multi-agency sub-regional migration meetings after expressing an interest in this aspect of Migration Yorkshire's work. Researchers' particular interests are taken into account when assigning them to specific projects or pieces of work.

• Contributing to regular written outputs: some of the researchers write for Migration Yorkshire’s weekly migration news roundup: this involves sourcing relevant stories and writing them up appropriately for a public audience.

• Supporting the delivery of events: researchers have been involved in the Yorkshire Integration Festival, for example supporting community participation, and joining the front of house team on the day. 

• Web uploading: for example research summaries for the Migration Yorkshire migration research database.

• Video editing: for example promotional videos produced by members of the Yorkshire and Humber Refugee Integration Forum.