Bridget Penhale

Small Group Project 2022-23

Decolonise global participation: Developing new conceptual and participatory paradigms

With Ewen Speed & Fiona Poland & Joy Y. Zhang & Nicola Yeates & Peter Beresford

This project is led by a team of leading empirical social scientists who are committed to the development of new conceptual and participatory paradigms in political participation globally. In recent years, novel forms of political participation and the growing importance of the role that ‘civic epistemology’ plays in legitimising policy agendas and knowledge production have underlined the urgency for a truly transdisciplinary and non-Western centric approach to comprehending political participation. What is equally important, is foregrounding the ‘duality’ of some of the commonly-imagined enabling factors in political participation, such as the hopes and hype brought by technology and the slippery boundary between liberal and illiberal activism. This will help to develop a more realistic view of how inclusive and productive political participation can be cultivated.

More information

Research outcomes

Beresford, P., Penhale, B., Poland, F., Speed, E., Yeates, N. and Zhang, J. Y. (eds) (2024)

Routledge Handbook of Global Political Participation. Routledge.

Areas of interest

Safeguarding Colonial Violence Domestic Violence Mental Health Social Care Ethics Social Work

Cohort

FG8

Biography

Bridget Penhale is Emeritus Reader in the School of Health Sciences at the University of East Anglia, where she is a member of the Mental Health and Social Care and Dementia & Complexity in Later Life research groups. She is a qualified and registered social worker with extensive clinical and managerial experience across hospital and community services, and is recognised as a national expert in elder abuse and adult safeguarding, with significant international recognition in the field. Her research has focused particularly on elder abuse, adult protection, domestic and intimate partner violence, and the mental health and social care of older people. She was Principal Investigator on a major Department of Health-funded study on partnerships and regulation in adult protection (2004–2007), and has led and contributed to numerous other UK and European research projects. She has published over 84 research outputs, including six books, and her recent publications include Professional Curiosity in Safeguarding Adults (Routledge, 2025). She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the Gerontological Society of America, the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse, and the Royal Society of Arts, and received the International Rosalie Wolf Award for Research and Practice in Elder Abuse in 2010. She serves on the editorial board of the British Journal of Social Work and has guest-edited the Journal of Adult Protection.

Biographical details correct as of 20.04.26