This project aims to develop a Community University (Comm-UNI-ty), where knowledge exchange is embedded in a horizontal working relationship between academics and community activists to co-design and co-deliver a curriculum around power and participation. The project builds on an AHRC Connecting Communities funded Scoping Review on 'Power in Community'. The Scoping Review combined a review of literature on power and power in communities with 'Power Talks' in eight communities across the north of England. The academic literature revealed that the idea of power as based on the domination of the 'other' has been effectively challenged by other understandings of power, which stress, for instance, non dominating forms, eg. power with or power to. The 'Power Talks' revealed that community residents engaged in change processes (community activists) practice that other kind of power. At least amongst the eight participant groups, power was defined as about cooperating, sharing, enabling and listening. Participants spoke of not wanting the 'power of the powerful' and being keen to hand power on if they managed to win positions of power. In rejecting dominating power, many activists found, however, that their capacity to influence the 'powerful' and bring about effective change was limited. A research proposition emerged from the study: to what extent can non dominating power be effective without reproducing dominating power? In our feedback of the Scoping Study to 'power talk' participants, we discussed how this proposition could be explored more deeply. The idea emerged of building a Community University (shortened by one participant to Comm-Uni-ty). The Community University would be a departure from traditional University outreach, partnership and engagement. It would take the idea of 'University' into communities and build a space where academic knowledge could be exchanged with experiential and practical knowledge, without privileging one over the other. It seeks to bring knowledge production and social action together through this knowledge exchange process and through continuous systematised learning (visual and/or written field diaries) which would enable participating students themselves to assess the impact of the Comm-Uni-ty over a year through their efforts to bring about change. Thus, the pathway to impact would be tracked as an integral part of the knowledge exchange design, and participants would produce the evidence of impact themselves through their peer and academic assessed Comm-Uni-ty assignments. This proposal was itself constructed through a participatory process with 24 potential participants from a varied range of socially diverse grass roots community activists, many of whom have had no connection with formal education and who were deeply sceptical towards mainstream politics. We learnt through this process that the curriculum and activities must be taylored carefully for non academic users with busy and complex lives.Thus, the proposed activities included creative approaches to applying social scientific knowledge and aims to experiment with pedagogy and methodology. Through our civil society partner (Joseph Rowntree Foundation) and our co-applicant ( Salford University) we are looking to the potential replicability of this approach in other Northern cities. Our final celebratory and impact event will aim to showcase to state and statutory bodies how with appropriate support and co-design, grassroots community participants can themselves deliver change responsibly and productively. In this way, the project will seek to overcome the disconnect between state and society and foster enhanced participation in politics and change at the local level where evidence suggests most people are interested in acting but this potential for participation remains mostly unrealised in practice.

Social and spatial inequalities between and within core and peripheral regions have re-emerged as a major economic and political issue in developed economies. Such divisions have generated economic and social discontent and growing levels of political support for populist and nationalist parties in peripheral regions, particularly certain old industrial areas. This turmoil fuelled the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US as well as support for the Rassemblement National (National Rally) and Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France and the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany. In response, researchers, commentators and politicians have voiced concerns about the places 'left behind' by globalisation, technological and economic change. While welcome in increasing the political visibility of social and spatial inequalities, the 'left behind' category risks hiding and over-simplifying the different experiences and development paths of people and places. The aim of the project is to develop a new understanding of demographic and socio-economic change in peripheral regions, examining the circumstances and prospects of places and people currently categorised together as 'left behind'. It will advance understandings of peripheralisation as an on-going process driven by the geographical concentration of people and prosperity in large urban centres alongside the decline or stagnation of other regions. The research is concerned with inner peripheries defined by their disconnection from external territories and networks, particularly urban regions and intermediate areas close to cities experiencing demographic and socio-economic stagnation or decline. Taking an approach that compares the experiences of France, Germany and the UK in their western European context, the research has four objectives: i) To understand the distinctive circumstances and development pathways of peripheral regions, overcoming the tendency to subsume different kinds of places beneath the broad category of 'left behind'; ii) To assess the relationships between the population dynamics of peripheral regions and socio-economic, health and political outcomes, covering both people moving from, and staying within, peripheral regions to redress the existing research bias towards migration between regions; iii) To examine the livelihood activities and practices of residents in peripheral regions, remedying the neglect of how 'ordinary' people deal with peripherality; iv) To identify new policy responses that combine conventional and alternative perspectives, moving beyond the reliance upon growing larger cities and spreading their prosperity to surrounding regions. Using a range of research methods and a cross-national research design, the research team will address these objectives by undertaking the following tasks: i) Identifying and categorising peripheral regions across western Europe to identify their different pathways of development and the key dimensions and processes of concentration and peripheralisation, drawing upon international and national secondary quantitative data; ii) Investigating the different experiences and outcomes for people moving from, and staying in, peripheral regions in France, Germany and the UK using secondary quantitative data; iii) Examining people's everyday livelihood strategies and practices in peripheral regions through six neighbourhood case studies (two per country) based on semi-structured interviews, non-participant observation, livelihood infrastructures mapping, and focus groups; iv) Assessing current and informing future policy approaches to address the varied situations of peripheral regions through analysing secondary documentation and key actor interviews. v) Synthesising findings, relating them to the overall project aim and objectives, and writing up the project's research outputs (8 international journal articles, 1 monograph and policy report).

Summary In a time of austerity and low economic growth the challenges faced by low-waged workers in earning enough to support themselves and their families to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living are immense. Identifying effective and sustainable pathways out of in-work poverty for these workers holds significant benefit for the workers, their families and the state. However for employers facing increasing expectations to view their employees' wage through a lens of social responsibility rather than purely productivity or market comparison, this can amount to another significant cost pressure, to be set against a general background of competing wage demands throughout the organisation's workforce. Understanding how effective different anti-poverty measures actually are for workers, and how sustainable they are as long-term measures to be engaged with by employers, is therefore crucial to the in-work poverty policy debate. A debate that is increasingly urgent as recent UK figures show in-work poverty to be currently outstripping that of poverty in workless households. This project provides a unique and valuable opportunity for a team of social scientists from the University of York and three important employers from the York labour market to work together on an applied research project that will help employers identify the likely effectiveness and sustainability of current measures being employed to reduce in-work poverty within their organisations. The project partners are the City of York Council (CYC), Joseph Rowntree Foundation/Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust (JRF/JRHT) and York St John University (YSJU). The research project and knowledge exchange will focus on one specific geographical labour market, York. However the challenges currently being faced by these three employers are not York specific. Therefore the investigation and development of effective and sustainable strategies to deal with in-work poverty within these three project partner organisations will have much relevance to many more employers (and workers) across the UK. To investigate which are the most effective and sustainable policies to reduce in-work poverty the project will undertake: 1. an employer and worker level analysis of the effects of the adoption of a living wage policy within the organisation and issues relating to the sustainability of the living wage commitment. Research which will not only be supporting CYC, JRF/JRHT and YSJU in their own organisation's adoption and sustainable embedding of the living wage policy but it will also provide an important evaluation of a wage policy considered to be a cornerstone of any anti-poverty employer stance, an evaluation which will have potential value to many more organisations in the UK. 2. an assessment of the constraints and challenges currently being faced by workers from the three project partner workforces will be undertaken through the design and collection of two surveys; the first will be a survey of a sample of workers (about 500 workers) earning below a particular wage rate at the three partner organisations. The second will be a survey that follows-up a sample of workers (about 40 workers) who responded to the first survey and were found to be experiencing or at risk of in-work poverty. Both surveys will allow an assessment of how effective current anti-poverty policies engaged with by the employers actually are for the workers. 3. an analysis using national and regional data on wage distributions, wage growth, and in-work poverty over time to provide a framing or background to the discussion of which are the most effective and sustainable pathways out of in-work poverty. This analysis will help to generalise the project findings beyond the York labour market and set the experiences of the project partners' York based employees into a national context.

This research looks at what works in tackling poverty amongst young people (aged 16 to 25) who do not live in the parental home, with a focus on the role that housing providers can play. Measures to address poverty in this age group are delivered by a range of landlords and agencies that provide accommodation and housing related services. They include the provision of accommodation ranging from temporary supported housing to permanent long term housing. They can also provide advice and services including assistance with training and education and schemes to facilitate access to the private rented sector. The research will investigate the feasibility of implementing successful measures across the UK. The long term impact of the research should be a reduction in poverty amongst young people in the UK. Young people in poverty will therefore be the ultimate beneficiaries. They will have a variety of personal circumstances, such as being homeless and out of work and not in education, or in low paid work but unable to access decent housing. The research should lead to an increase in good practice that improves the quality, scale and effectiveness of the housing and related services provided to young people in poverty. In working towards this impact, in the shorter and medium term the research will benefit housing providers and policy makers wishing to implement measures to address poverty among young people. They will benefit from the evidence of actions that can tackle poverty successfully. The academic community will benefit from the research through the new body of evidence on what kinds of poverty interventions work, contributing to academic debates and addressing gaps in the evidence. A desk based literature review will examine evidence of the impact of selected housing interventions for young people in the UK and in other countries. An online survey of housing providers in Europe will extend the knowledge of actions that work throughout Europe. Quantitative analysis of housing and youth poverty in the UK, using secondary data, will examine current practice in rent settings for properties occupied by young single people and will use census data from 1971 to 2011 to assess the impact of housing policy measures on young people's well-being. The impact on increased employability and income will be evaluated using novel econometric techniques and the consequences of housing for fuel costs and disposable income will be assessed. Case studies of selected organisations will show what housing providers can do to tackle poverty and what the consequences are for young people. The research will focus on schemes that have the potential to alleviate poverty by reducing housing and living costs including fuel bills, increasing incomes by improving employability, locating housing near to jobs, increasing the capacity for unsupported and supported independent living and tackling the wider factors that are both cause and consequences of poverty. CCHPR has four partners in this research. They have helped to develop the proposal and will be directly involved in the research and its dissemination. Their involvement will focus and extend the impact of the research. Centrepoint is the UK's leading charity for homeless young people, supporting 16-25 years olds with housing, learning, health and life skills. The Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust provides housing and a variety of care and support services in Yorkshire and the North East of England. Community Housing Cymru (CHC) is the representative body for housing associations and community mutuals in Wales, all not-for profit organisations. The European Federation of Public, Cooperative & Social Housing organisations (CECODHAS) is a network of 41 national & regional federations with about 41,400 providers in 19 countries.

Our vision is to engage users in the design of control systems they like, that allow them to create the comfort conditions they want, and which through using the technology and fabric of their homes more effectively, reduces their energy use by 20%. We want to design and test these control systems in a way that complies with utilities' CERT-2 obligations, and provide design, installation and maintenance guidance which allows others to learn from our work and apply it more widely. We estimate this has the potential to save around 3 MT CO2 annually.Homes use about a third of the UK's energy, and produce about a third of all CO2 emissions. Because of the low rates of demolition, and the difference in efficiency between new and old houses, even if every house built from now to 2050 was zero-carbon, the total emissions from the UK housing stock would stay roughly the same. Any significant reductions must come from existing homes. In existing homes, making them comfortable (primarily through heating) uses around two thirds of their energy and carbon. We also know that how occupants' make their home comfortable, through use of the heating system, doors, windows, lighting, the clothes they wear, etc, has an enormous effect on energy use. Identical homes, with different occupants, can vary in energy use by a factor of two to three. Driving your home well can reduce your carbon footprint much more than installing wind turbines or solar panels. Currently, driving your home well is very hard to do. There's almost no feedback on the effect of leaving the bedroom window open at night, or having your thermostat at 21 C rather than 19 C. A quarterly energy bill provides almost no help so occupants' are currently 'driving blind' when it comes to saving energy or reducing their carbon footprint. This project aims to give them something to see with / forms of feedback on the energy costs of their actions which are immediate and in a form they themselves want. We will work with occupants, in their own homes, to understand what they would find useful. Using an action research approach and user centred design methods, we will understand their day to day comfort practices (i.e. how they drive their home) and design systems to help them drive it better, better in terms of comfort, spending less on energy and reducing their carbon footprint. Previous studies show that relatively simple forms of feedback, such as an LCD display showing instantaneous energy use, can help people save 5 to 15%. While these displays are good, they usually only display the total electricity used in the home, not on individual appliances, and they only provide information. In order for people to make changes they need three things: feedback (information on energy use); motivation (the desire to reduce energy use) and choice (the ability to act differently). There is scope to design technologies that provide all three of these - to provide occupants with systems for control that tell them what is using energy, what choices they have to use less, and do to so in a way they like to engage with. An approach targeting all three of these issues, and engaging users throughout the design process, has not been tried before but given previous studies, savings of 20% could reasonably be expected. The research is highly interdisciplinary and is based in field work involving lots of monitoring to ensure the technologies work and deliver real, measurable savings. The research team is a balance of technologists and social researchers and through working closely with householders, utilities and housing providers, we feel we can make a real contribution to understanding how people use energy to make their homes comfortable, and to develop control systems that can help them do this more effectively while saving on energy costs and reducing their carbon footprint.