We have a big vision to work on projects with real world impact, shifting the negative narrative for neurodivergent people and their families and improving translational science in mental health and healthcare for all. We are currently working on a number of research and knowledge exchange projects with internal and external collaborators. 

We currently work with researchers from King's Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Liverpool, UCL's IoE Psychology and Sociology Departments, University of Durham, University of Warwick, University of Glasgow, University of Leeds and many independent lived experience consultants and lived experience authors. 

 Get in touch if you would like to explore working with us by completing the form below

       Spotlight on selected research collaborations

GRRAND members play a key role in supporting with writing competitive grants, leading work packages, supporting innovation in participatory mixed methods research actions and programme evaluations. 

RE-STAR is a four-year, 3.3 million interdisciplinary programme funded by UKRI/MRC "Developing Mind" . We work in collaboration with Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke (Chief) of the Experimental Psychopathology and Neurodevelopment Research Group team at King’s College London.

Many neurodivergent young people such as those with ADHD or autism traits develop depression during adolescence – but we currently don’t know which individuals are at risk, what underlying processes increase that risk or, perhaps most importantly, the best way to intervene to increase resilience to reduce that risk.

RE-STAR will address these gaps by exploring the interplay between  autism and/or ADHD traits, exposure to environmental stressors, and emotional responding in neurodivergent young people (NYP), in driving developmental pathways to depression.

RE-STAR is a multi-disciplinary collective of academic researchers, neurodivergent young people and stakeholder practitioners. This research combines neuroscience and psychology with applied theatre expertise.

Together, we are exploring the links between young people’s experiences of and response to adverse emotional events and settings in school, and their emergent risk of depression.

We will use the information gathered to develop school-based interventions to support resilience in young people and reduce the likelihood of them developing depression.

RE-STAR project will find new ways to understand emotional difficulties from the perspective of neurodivergent young people and improve the measurement of these issues. 

See below a visual outline of RE-STAR's research work packages:

CREATE is a 1.1 million programme funded by MRC Methodological Innovation programme which aims to develop creative tools to help young people, scientists and arts researchers to study adolescent mental health together. This is a project led by Prof Paul Cooke, at Uni of Leeds in collaboration with GRRAND colleagues, Uni of Oxford and more. 

We first conduct reviews of the main barriers and potential solutions and take these ideas into Living Labs. These bring youth lived experience into exploration around methods and interpretation with researchers.

We focus our methods development in relation to adolescent loneliness as stimulus. Our ambition is to create a large resource hub, for anyone working at the intersection of arts, science and youth voice, presenting teaching tools, frameworks, glossaries, analysis methods and good practice guides to improve and optimise the learning we can glean from youth-informed, science friendly, arts based research.

This project is funded by the UK Medical, Arts and Humanities and Economic and Social Research Councils. See below outputs created by our youth researchers.