Our current work
ICC Our current work
Our Research Programmes and Projects
Our approach is strongly end-user-focused, embedded in a community development and co-production philosophy.
We work with governments and practitioners in ensuring that our research impacts upon policy and practice worldwide: recently we have worked in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America.
Our research is conducted by key academics and within two core themes: Online Harms and Cybercrime and Community Health and Wellbeing.
Our research focuses
Ongoing research projects
Common Health: Assets - a realist evaluation of how, how much and in what circumstances community led organisations impact on health, wellbeing and health inequalities
Principal Investigator/Main Researcher: Dr Marcello Bertotti
Start date: 1 September 2021
End date: 31 August 2024
This project aims to establish what are effective community focused approaches to maximising the potential of people as assets to improve health, wellbeing, and health inequalities as well as what are the mechanisms underlying community focused approaches that enable implementation and ensure scalability and sustainability.
Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow Centre for Population Health, Scottish Communities for Health and Wellbeing, Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC), New NHS Alliance, Queen’s University Belfast, Bournemouth University, Annexe Communities, University of Cambridge .
Youth Pathways into Cybercrime
Start date: 1 January 2020
End date: 31 May 2023
This project aims to understand the technical and human factors that determine cybercriminal behaviours, especially as to the young people. To that end, this project aims to use a multidisciplinary approach in line with European Union member states to develop policy harmonisation in tackling cybercrime.
Adelaide University
Capabilities, Opportunities, Places and Engagement: Approach for Social Inclusion of Difficult to Reach Young People through a “Relational Proximity” Community Network (COPE)
Start date: 1 December 2021
End date: 30 November 2023
The project aims to implement an integrated intervention based on an innovative and experimental ‘relational proximity’ approach for social inclusion of difficult to reach young people as well as the evaluation of how this intervention may add value and be integrated in the current design of NEET employment and social services.
Healthcare trust, Province autonomous of Trento, Italy
Forming a group of young advisors for Natural England’s ‘Children’s People and Nature Survey (C-PANS)
Start date: January 2021
End date: March 2023
Through this commission the survey team aims to bring together a group of young people aged 8 to 15 years old, to act as advisors in the on-going use of and development of C-PANS. This project will form two age-appropriate streams of the advisory group, one aged 8-11 and the other aged 12-15 in both the Northeast and Southeast of England. While some of the young people approached will have experience of participating in meetings (e.g., a school council representative), others may be less confident and will be invited to attend in a pair as peers/friends for mutual support. By recruiting 20 young people in total, we expect to maintain a minimum of at least 12 committed members throughout the project and beyond to provide information on how children and young people in England experience and think about the natural environment.
Natural England and University of Central Lancashire
Anticipatory Care Pathway Evaluation
Start date: 1 April 2023
End date: 30 March 2024
This project aims to co-design and deliver an evidence based CPD training package to support the implementation of the Anticipatory Care Pathway and serve as a critical friend to newly established healthcare teams. In practice, this CPD will be co-designed with relevant stakeholders as well as building in a self-assessment component to measure the learners experience and satisfaction.
Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
The use of community-based wellbeing activities for CYP as a potential prevention and early intervention pathway to improve adolescent emotional and social development
Start date: 1 October 2021
End date: 20 September 2023
This project aims to examine the use of community-based wellbeing activities for CYP as a potential prevention and early intervention pathways. Researchers and young people will work with existing social prescribing projects for people aged 10-24, to assess if they work and how.
St Christopher
Cancer Self-referral Pathways Evaluation
Start date: April 2022
End date: March 2023
This project aims to perform a 12-month evaluation of the cancer self-referral pathway that will provide key learning and insights into the strengths and challenges during the programme’s implementation. the evaluation plan will be co-designed to develop evaluative-evidence and insight to assess the effectiveness of the programme in accomplishing its stated aims and objectives to provide an acceptable, accessible and appropriate pathway for the public to self-refer themselves for assessment.
North-East London Cancer Alliance
STAR Social Transformation and Advocacy through Research
Start date: 15 September 2021
End date: 31 October 2025
This project aims to create a specialist research training route that identifies and creates resources to address the impact of systemic racism and class inequality on research careers through an interconnected chain of activities, enhancing research and research advocacy skills from school to undergraduate to masters to doctoral levels.
OfS/Research England
CYP Diabetes Transition Evaluation
Start date: November 2022
End date: December 2024
The evaluation aims to support the development of sustainable service models to maximise improvements in outcomes for children and young adults transitioning from paediatric care. Ipsos MORI are the evaluators working with up to 21 pilot sites between September 2022-March 2025 to identify key scalable themes and learning to underpin improvements in diabetes transition and young adult care. Dr Sharpe’s is a consultant on behalf of Ipsos Mori lending his expertise in NHS service improvement evaluations as well as participatory research with young people and adults living with chronic conditions.
Ipsos Mori and NHIR
Proactive Care Pathway CPD training package for the City and Hackney Neighbourhoods Programme
Start date: April 2022
End date: March 2023
In collaboration with the Neighbourhoods Programme (hosted by Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust), ICC will co-design with residence and staff, and deliver an evidence-based in-person training event that will raise awareness about frailty in the cultural context of City and Hackney. This training is aimed at volunteers and those people working with residents living with or at risk of frailty. In addition, a need was identified to develop further culturally appropriate pathways to support people. The training event will be aimed at multidisciplinary cohorts of Neighbourhoods resident/staff/volunteers with the aim of building frailty aware neighbourhoods.
The Tīpuna Project
Start date: 1 February 2023
End date: 31 January 2026
The Tipuna (‘Ancestor’) Project (TTP) is Māori and Pākehā (White settler) collaboration based in Aotearoa to innovate and evaluate research practices that include Indigenous and settler ancestors in order to counter (1) the denigration of Indigenous ways of knowing/being, (2) the historically traumatic nature of the research space for Indigenous peoples and (3) low settler accountability, before translating these counter-practices for local and international decolonising initiatives more broadly. Using participatory action research (PAR) as both a methodology and a case study, we are asking overall: What are the decolonial possibilities and complexities of including ancestors as co-researchers in PAR?
UK Arts & Humanities Research Council.