Harm - The Start and End of Everything

When a criminologist meets an epidemeologist it is inevitable their theories on why the world looks the way it does will come from different places. When one is academic and the other is actively trying to find solutions from within grass roots communities to ever quantifiable but not justifiable data it was unsurprising that applying a criminological lens sparked new conversations in the health inequalities debate.

Harm as a research project, and an underlying ethos for Insatiable, was born from these conversations. With Harm we seek to open up dialogue in communities that encourages people to examine harm, what harm means to them, what it looks like, how it feels as well as the harm they may do to others and structural harms that come into communities from policy and services.

In making a bold 5 year application to the Wellcome Trust Discovery Grant scheme we believe, as our starting point for this exploration, that harm is now an foundation stone in shaping individual lives, communities and wider society, and the more dissonance and disconnection we experience, the more harmful it will become creating an empathy deficit that perpetuates harm rather than encouraging or supporting communities to heal and find solutions to their challenges and futures.

To unpack harm in this way presents the opportunity to learn exactly where communities are now and the individual and collective challenges they face. This will influence every area of life from health to the local economy, care to education. Its allows what are often historical and so outdated responses to change to be examined and for the erveyone to have the opportunity to get back their agency and have a voice in their future.