Future and Past Events

26 February 2026 13:00-14:00 (UK Time) Bring Your Challenge to Lunch session. The topic is‘Rapidly moving stories’: When challenging research hits the headlines. E-mail us at challengingresearch@gmail.com and we will send you the link to join. No need to prep anything and bring your lunch to eat as we chat.

Challenging research attends to the minutia of human and more-than-human lifeworlds, the structural and experiential terrains of social suffering, and the records and traces of ‘critical events’ (Das 1995), as these linger in the present. On occasions, challenging research hits the headlines. This session offers a space for an informal discussion of the possibilities and challenges that emerge when challenging research turns into – or turns to address – ‘rapidly moving stories’ circulating widely in the public domain.

You are warmly invited to the Autumn event of the Challenging Research Network: Challenging Research: Do you really want to go there? Tuesday, 25 November 2025, 2.00–3.30 p.m. No need to prepare anything — but be prepared to do some reflective writing. If you’d like to attend, email us at challengingresearch@gmail.com, and we’ll send you the link to join. In this session, Meryem and Jana will be in conversation about the nature of challenging research — how we approach it, what it asks of us, and how we make sense of its impact on our thinking and practice. Following the conversation, there will be time for reflective writing and shared discussion, inviting participants to think through their own experiences of research that unsettles, transforms, or demands ethical attention. All are very welcome, whatever your discipline or stage of research.

20 November 2025 1300-1400 (UK Time) Bring Your Challenge to Lunch session. The topic is ‘Writing Together: Collaborations between academics and lived experience experts’ E-mail us at challengingresearch@gmail.com and we will send you the link to join.
No need to prep anything and bring your lunch to eat as we chat. Join us for an informal discussion of writing with lived experience collaborators, from peer reviewed articles, research reports and conference presentations to blogs, podcasts, or creative pieces. How do we share authorship and voice in collaborative writing on sensitive topics? How do we navigate dynamics of power and emotion? How can we overcome the barriers created by academic norms in terms of style and content to represent all involved? We invite everyone to share stories and insights about co-writing from different perspectives, or to bring questions about your own plans or ideas for writing together with non-academic partners. 

23 October 2025 1300-1400 (UK Time) Bring Your Challenge to Lunch session
The topic: ‘Supporting Research Students working on Challenging Research’
E-mail us at challengingresearch@gmail.com and we will send you the link to join.
No need to prep anything and bring your lunch to eat as we chat. This informal discussion will examine the issue of supporting research students working on emotionally difficult or politically sensitive topics in the humanities and social sciences. Such projects often raise complex ethical, emotional, and practical challenges. You are invited to bring problems that you have encountered, as well as thoughts, and perspectives on strategies for supervision and pastoral support. This confidential and informal session is open to all network members, with supervisors invited to contribute strategies they might use to support PGRs, while PGRs are warmly invited to share their perspectives on what kinds of support – supervisory, institutional, and pastoral – would make a meaningful difference to their experience of challenging research. 

Call for Participants: Toward Trauma-Informed Research: Archives, Ethics and Emotional Sustainability, 11th November 2025 (The National Archives, Kew) Circulated on behalf of Lauren Cochrane, University of Exeter. See details below. Applications must be submitted by Friday 17th October.

Past 25 Sept 2025 1300-1400 UK Time Bring Your Challenge to Lunch session
The topic ‘AI in Challenging Research’
E-mail us at challengingresearch@gmail.com and we will send you the link to join.
No need to prep anything and bring your lunch to eat as we chat.

Past 9 July 2025 1300-1400 UK Time Bring Your Challenge to Lunch session
The topic ‘How to fight loneliness’* (in research)
E-mail us at challengingresearch@gmail.com and we will send you the link to join.
No need to prep anything and bring your lunch to eat as we chat.
[Thanks to Wilco for the title https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CAYFIpi89k]

Past Spring 2025 Group Meeting, Tuesday 18th March 2025, online.
Hope and Care while undertaking Challenging Research
Dr Philipp Schulz (University of Bremen) and Dr Jessica Rapson (King’s College London)