education

by

Call for abstracts: World Community Development Conference

In summer 2026 the World Community Development Conference will be coming to Scotland! I am part of a group of lecturers from the Community Development programmes at the University of Glasgow who are helping to organise this event.

Running from 29 June to 2 July 2026, the conference will be a space for connection, critical reflection, creative exchange, and global solidarity. It will be rooted in the values of justice, participation, community empowerment and human rights and underpinned by Community Development’s emphasis on collective initiatives for collective outcomes.

Conference Themes and Guiding Questions

We invite submissions aligned with one or more of the following core themes. To support your thinking, we offer the following open questions:

1. Challenge

This theme centres on critiquing and confronting systems of injustice and advocating for policy and funding to support rights-based Community Development.

  • What are the most urgent challenges facing communities and how is Community Development responding?
  • How are issues of power, inequality, technology, marginalisation or oppression being confronted and addressed?
2. Change

This theme is about co-creating new approaches through collaboration and future-focused dialogue, while strengthening the resilience of practitioners and communities in complex environments.

  • What new ideas, or practices are driving meaningful change in your work?
  • How is resilience being built in communities facing political oppression, social or economic inequality, or the ill effects of climate change?
  • How are human rights and Community Development being used as tools for accountability?
3. Collective Action

This theme explores community organising through inclusive, participatory, and justice-driven practices and connecting across borders to build solidarity.

  • How are people coming together to organise, mobilise, and demand justice?
  • What examples of effective collective action can you share, and what impact is it having?
  • How can we ensure that Community Development is oriented towards collective justice rather than exclusion?

Presentation Formats

We welcome a wide range of formats, including:

  • Conference Paper: Research or practice-based presentations (20 minutes)
  • Facilitated or creative workshop: Participatory, performative or creative workshops by individuals or groups (1 hour)
  • Lightning talk: A concise presentation highlighting a key issue or insight (5 minutes)
  • Poster presentation: Digital or multimedia posters showcasing projects or research
  • Creative and participatory formats: Including book launches, exhibitions, and cultural events

Submission Requirements

Please submit a 300-word abstract or a 3-minute video of your proposed contribution, including:

  • The topic and framing of your contribution
  • The format of your presentation
  • The relevance to one or more of the conference themes
  • Author/s name(s), organisation/institution, contact information (e.g. email address, mobile/telephone number).

Submissions should be submitted via this page.

Logo for the Glasgow World Community Development Conference 2026.
by

Call for new Editorial Board members for the Community Development Journal

Application deadline: Friday 17 January 2025, 24.00 UTC/GMT

We are currently recruiting to the editorial board of the Community Development Journal (CDJ), for which I’m currently one of the co-editors. This is a normal enough practice for many publications, but a bit of a historic moment for CDJ, which has historically relied on recommendations from an existing board member over the past 59 years(!) of the journal’s existence.

The current CDJ editorial board takes a very constructive and democratic approach to decision-making, so I’m really excited for the potential to reach beyond our existing networks to expand our diversity of knowledge and skills. Moreover, as Kirsty Lohman and I note in our editorial for issue 60.1, this will be (as far as we are aware) the first time we have ever recruited beyond the UK and Ireland – something that I feel is long overdue.

The full call can be found below, cross-posted from the CDJ Plus website. If you are at all interested, please do apply! Importantly, we are seeking to recruit practitioners as well as researchers, so you do not need to hold any kind of academic post in order to apply.


The Community Development Journal is seeking to appoint up to five new Editorial
Board members to join us from March 2025. We welcome applications from
academics and practitioners globally, particularly encouraging those from under-
represented groups.

About the Community Development Journal (CDJ)
Established in 1966, the CDJ is the leading international journal in its field, covering
a wide range of topics, reviewing significant developments and providing a forum for
cutting-edge debates about theory and practice. It adopts a broad definition of
community development to include policy, planning and action as they impact on the
life of communities. We particularly seek to publish critically-focused articles that
challenge received wisdom, report and discuss innovative practices, and relate
issues of community development to questions of social justice, diversity and
ecological sustainability.

The journal is published in partnership with Oxford University Press on a profit-share
basis. The income received from the journal is managed by a charitable trust linked
to the journal, of which editorial board members are also trustees. The trust can fund
initiatives such as conferences, seminars and other activities that support its mission.
The strategic objectives of CDJ are currently:

  • To produce the leading international journal in the field;
  • To develop critical reflection and theoretical learning on community development;
  • To promote international learning and exchange;
  • To promote informed critical debate on community development theory and practice;
  • To develop and support appropriate relationships, partnerships and networks to further these objectives;
  • To ensure that CDJ is well governed and financially viable to achieve the above objectives.

With several long-standing board members retiring, we are looking to refresh the
membership with active and engaged people committed to promoting community
development scholarship.

About the role
Board member responsibilities include:

  • Attending board meetings (virtually or in person) as required. There are currently two full-day board meetings per year, including one residential.
  • Contributing as a peer reviewer to the journal at the request of the journal editors. This may include reviewing up to four articles per year.
  • Supporting and participating in our events and initiatives.
  • Promoting the Community Development Journal and encouraging submissions.

We ask that Editorial Board members commit to minimum of three years.

Who are we looking for?
The Community Development Journal is committed to equality, diversity, and
inclusion. We actively seek to create an Editorial Board that reflects the diversity of
the communities we serve and study.

Skills and experiences we would particularly welcome include some of the following:

  • Good links to practitioner networks;
  • Experience as a community development practitioner/academic;
  • Financial management;
  • Familiarity with UK charity governance;
  • Interest in editorial roles;
  • Supporting people to build capacity for writing;
  • Organisation of community development focused events;
  • Knowledge and/or experience of democratic publishing models.

    How to apply
    Please submit your application including:
  1. A brief statement outlining the knowledge, skills and experience you would bring
    and explaining why you are interested in becoming a member of the CDJ Editorial
    Board
  2. A two-page CV

    Send your application to secretarycdj@gmail.com with the subject line “Editorial
    Board Application.”

    Application deadline: Friday 17 January 2025, 24.00 UTC/GMT
    For any queries, please contact secretarycdj@gmail.com

by

New article: The association between microaggressions and mental health among UK trans people

I have a new article out in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, co-authored with colleagues at University College London. It reports on the findings of a study led by Talen Wright, looking at the mental health impacts of microaggressions on trans people.

You can download and read the full study for free here:

The association between microaggressions and mental health among UK trans people:
a cross-sectional study
by Talen Wright, Gemma Lewis, Talya Greene, Ruth Pearce, and Alexandra Pitman


What did we find out about microaggressions, mental health, and trans people?

Wright designed a survey of 787 trans adults in the UK, asking questions both about participants’ mental health and their experiences of microaggressions. When analysing the findings, we found that experiencing more microaggressions was associated with worse mental health, including increased severity of depressive and anxiety symptoms, and increased odds of lifetime self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts.

We also found evidence indicating an association between specific microaggressions and specific mental health outcomes:

  • Participants who reported more misuse of their pronouns by others were more likely to report increased thoughts of self-harm and suicide.
  • Participants who reported more experiences of their gender being denied by others were more likely to attempt suicide.
  • Participants who reported more experiences of people around them acting uncomfortably around them because of being trans were more likely to report increased symptoms of depression.
  • Participants who reported more experiences of people around them denying the existence of transphobia were more likely to report increased symptoms of anxiety.


Why is this study important?

With apologies to my co-authors, I consider this a form of “cat detector” research. I base this term on an image shared a few years ago by the Facebook page High Impact PhD Memes, purporting to show someone successfully wielding a cat detector:

The meme is labelled as follows: Interviewer: "How would you define your previous works?" Me: "Groundbreaking". Underneath this is an image depicting the researchers' previous works: a person holding a machine in a cat's face. The machine is labelled "cat detector", and has one face lit up green, labelled "Yes", indicating that it has successfully detected a cat.


The meme is funny because, well, it’s obviously a cat. The research is stating the obvious.

And so this research might quite reasonably seem to many trans people. We know that microaggressions are harmful: that when people deny who we are, it hurts. When researchers or journalists or politicians talk about high rates of poor mental health among trans communities, we know that it is because people are harming us, that entire systems are set up in ways that harm us.

At the same time, we live in a political and policy context where trans people’s voices are rarely heard, and disinformation runs rampant. A lot of cis people are getting inaccurate information about our lives and needs, including healthcare commissioners, doctors, nurses, therapists, educators, and civil servants, as well as our families, friends, and colleagues. Trans people are often portrayed as overly sensitive to other people’s transphobic behaviour, or living in denial of reality.

Given this context, I feel it is beneficial to demonstrate empirically – with statistical analyses! – that small actions add up, and “microaggressions” cause real harm.

I hope this research will be useful for countering non-evidenced transphobic policy approaches. For example, the UK government’s current guidance on “Gender Questioning Children” in schools directly encourages educators to undertake actions that are associated with harmful outcomes in our study. As more research is conducted and published in this area, we will have more information available to clearly demonstrate the risks of transphobic policy, and empower advocates fighting for change.