Storying Life Courses for Intersectional Inclusion: Ethnicity and Wellbeing Across Time and Place, 2022-2025

This change-oriented project aimed to transform both understanding of inclusive ageing, and the prospects for new policy and practice approaches to achieve it. It was a timely and bold interdisciplinary effort to push the boundaries of knowledge, methods and policy and practice regarding racially minoritised populations and the potential for their greater inclusion.

The project's objectives were to:

1. To work in partnership with racially minoritised communities and other key stakeholders to critically interrogate dominant understandings of social inclusion/exclusion in order to re-imagine and reconceptualise them from this specific grounded perspective.

2. To develop creative, inclusive and adaptive approaches to research, dissemination and impact, so as to centre the lived experiences of racially minoritised communities as a strategy of recognising experiences that have been devalued and ignored in ageing research, policy and practice.

3. To work across disciplinary boundaries, adopting an intersectional life course approach and innovative methods, to develop new understandings of the causes of ethnic inequalities in social inclusion / exclusion and levels of wellbeing in later-life, including their place-based dynamics. This will involve exploiting the potential of existing datasets and administrative data linkages (in collaboration with our Co-I, the Office of National Statistics), as well as the production of new data to develop a contextualised and nuanced understanding of intersectional life course inclusions / exclusions. We will use the Open Science Framework to facilitate future exploitation of the project data by policymakers and other researchers.

4. To co-produce with key stakeholders, including racially minoritised communities older people, creative steps for policy and practice interventions at micro, meso and macro levels to prevent the risk of exclusion and promote inclusive ageing.

5. To build capacity across the whole project team - Co-Is (academic, third-sector and government), Researchers, Project Partners, Community Researchers and Voice Forum members - through a bespoke programme of knowledge exchange, skills training and personal development, with an emphasis on furnishing opportunities for mutual learning across disciplines and sectors.

New data collection happened in Rotherham and Sheffield between 2023 and 2025, and included life history interviews, go-along interviews and participatory arts-based workshops.

本项目以变革为导向，旨在重塑人们对包容性老龄（inclusive ageing）的认知，同时优化实现该目标的新型政策与实践路径的发展前景。本项目是一项恰逢其时且颇具魄力的跨学科工作，旨在拓展针对种族少数群体（racially minoritised populations）的认知、研究方法及政策与实践的边界，探索进一步保障其社会融入的可行路径。

本项目的目标如下：
1. 与种族少数群体社区及其他关键利益相关方开展合作，批判性检视当前关于社会融入/排斥的主流认知，从该特定的扎根视角出发，对其进行重新构想与概念重构。
2. 研发兼具创新性、包容性与适应性的研究、成果传播及影响转化路径，将种族少数群体社区的切身经历置于研究核心，以此作为一种策略，正视那些在老龄研究、政策与实践中被贬低与忽视的经历。
3. 打破学科壁垒，采用交叉性生命历程方法（intersectional life course approach）与创新研究手段，深化对老年阶段社会融入/排斥及福祉水平层面种族不平等成因的认知，包括其地方层面的动态机制。本项目将结合现有数据集与行政数据关联资源（与本项目联合首席研究员、英国国家统计局（Office of National Statistics）合作），同时开展全新数据采集工作，以实现对交叉性生命历程融入/排斥机制的情境化、精细化认知。我们将依托开放科学框架（Open Science Framework），助力政策制定者与其他研究人员后续对本项目数据的复用。
4. 与包括老年种族少数群体在内的关键利益相关方联合创制政策与实践干预的创新举措，覆盖微观、中观与宏观三个层级，以防范排斥风险并推动包容性老龄发展。
5. 通过定制化的知识交流、技能培训与个人发展项目，全面赋能项目团队，提升其综合能力素养。团队成员涵盖联合首席研究员（Co-Is，来自学术机构、第三部门与政府部门）、研究人员、项目合作伙伴、社区研究人员及声音论坛成员，重点为跨学科、跨领域的互助学习创造机会。

2023年至2025年间，项目在罗瑟勒姆与谢菲尔德两地开展了全新数据采集工作，采集方式包括生命史访谈、陪同式访谈与参与式艺术工作坊。