Applications are invited for a three-year PhD studentship. The studentship will start on 1 October 2026.

DoS: Professor Helen Lloyd (helen.lloyd-1@plymouth.ac.uk)

2nd Supervisor: Dr Kristin Liabo

3rd Supervisor: Professor Heike Roms

The NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South West is inviting applications for a PhD studentship, funded by an ARC South West Doctoral Award, to commence on 1 October 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter. For eligible students the studentship will cover Home tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend of at least £21,805 for 3 years full-time. We welcome applicants who wish to study less than full-time, provided they are intending to complete their studies within the ARC funding period. The student would be based at the University of Plymouth. A training and development budget will also be provided to support the activity of the student.

Project Description

The NIHR now require researchers to ensure their studies are fully inclusive and address health inequalities. This means that researchers must broaden out who we involve in research. We need to understand who are experiencing health inequalities within our thematic areas of work and invite them to design the research with us.

People who experience health inequalities often also experience discrimination and other barriers to taking part in research. This is also true for some groups of staff who feel marginalised as less knowledgeable in their workplaces. Both these groups can feel alienated by the technical language used in research, and they can feel unwelcome or uncertain in formal meetings.

Playful and arts-based approaches to co-production have been highlighted as useful in making research more inclusive (Phillips et al 2024). Play and art can help people understand one another. It can help to enhance the relevance of lived experience and practice knowledge, alongside and equal to technical knowledge. Play and art-based approaches can also help people stay engaged in a research process that can otherwise be experienced as boring or arduous.

Co-production is recognized as important but doing it in an engaged, creative and inclusive way can be difficult. There are individual examples of good practice, but a lack of ready-to-use tools to help lower the barriers so that researchers can apply simple measures that make co-production meetings more inclusive for everyone.

The proposed project aims to create easy-to-use inclusive co-production approaches and tools. Its objectives are to:

1. Conduct a literature review of creative and inclusive co-production
2. Interview researchers and public members who have been involved in creative co-production, with a focus on inclusive practices
3. Use findings from the interviews to co-design tools to support co-production
4. Evaluate the tools by testing them in a small set of ARC-resourced studies

Potential applicants working in community, social care and public health are welcome to contact us to explore their suitability.

If you wish to discuss this project further informally, please contact Professor Helen Lloyd (helen.lloyd-1@plymouth.ac.uk). Queries about the award itself can be directed to arcsouthwest@exeter.ac.uk.