Our Objectives

Strengthening Family and Societal Wellbeing

A major strategic goal of the centre is to strengthen family and societal wellbeing via fatherhood and family research that is driven by innovative participatory methods, unique university-community partnerships, and dialogues with existing data.

Our key objectives are:

  • to consolidate and formalise interdisciplinary expertise capable of responding to key national and global challenges, by delivering on demand for research, consultancy, and evaluation.
  • to address social inequalities, promote gender equality and prosperous communities, and improve familial and societal well-being.
  • to pioneer and conduct methodologically innovative and interdisciplinary research in collaboration with other researchers, multi-agency partners and communities in order to maximise the impact of our research. Examples include the co-creation of support groups for dads and e-learning programmes.
  • to support the development of postgraduate research students and early career researchers in the areas of fatherhood and family research and in alignment with the objectives of the Concordat for Early Career Researchers.

Each of these objectives are underpinned by an ethos of constructive, compassionate, and mutually supportive approaches developed to support and challenge our researchers and partners to achieve their highest potential.

To date, we have received or are receiving external funding from UK Research and Innovation through the Future Leaders Fellowship scheme (Professor Anna Tarrant), the Nuffield Foundation, and the SENSS doctoral training partnership.

If you are interested in applying for a PhD or postdoctoral research study with the Centre, please contact Centre Director Professor Anna Tarrant to make initial enquiries.