Local Challenges Research Office

At the Local Challenges Research Office (LCRO), we build meaningful connections between local communities and researchers across South and West Wales. We bring together diverse forms of expertise to understand and address the everyday challenges and opportunities faced by local people and places.

At our core, we’re committed to building relationships and recognizing the valuable work already happening locally. But we also believe in the power of research to enable people to achieve more.

Our team takes a flexible approach that allows us to connect people and support collaborations that might otherwise lack the resources or networks to develop. We believe that long-term, sustainable, and meaningful collaboration enables us to achieve greater things together.

Do you have a challenge where a different perspective might help? An idea that could benefit from connecting community insights with research? Get in touch - we're here to help build partnerships that make a difference.

A Commitment to Place

The places where we live and work shape our lives. In South and West Wales, our special landscape, history, and culture give hope and opportunities to some people but can be obstacles for others.

History shows that social inequalities stick around in certain places, impacting families and communities for generations. But beneath the statistics and headlines, people understand their places in complex and relational ways. Where one person might see their neighbourhood as great, another might not.

These local histories and experiences mean that different places need different kinds of support. Policies in Wales and the UK now recognize the need to think carefully about places and involve the people who live there.

We support researchers to play a bigger role in local communities and solutions. Because it’s when communities come together to solve local problems that we can make real changes – both for ourselves and for others facing similar challenges worldwide.

We would love to hear from you if you would like to have a chat about a project idea.

The LCRO Team

We are a dynamic team of project and research officers, led by our co-directors.  We offer a holistic understanding of activity and expertise across the region which we maintain through relationships built on trust, mutual understanding, and an ethos of co-creation.

Our approach is all about working together, changing the old way of doing research to people, and instead working with and being led by communities at all stages of research. We work on the principles of being genuine, consistent and respectful.

Emily Adams

Emily Adams is a Project Officer leading on Swansea University’s place-based agenda through the Local Challenges Research Office (LCRO). Focusing on research projects, partnership building, and civic mission activities within South and West Wales.

Alongside Jo Hutchings, Emily is the key contact for those working with and within communities across the region building on extensive experience of delivering third sector services. Emily is passionate about platforming community voices and widening access through her projects and research. 

Emily is also a postgraduate researcher. Her current project explores the history of social mobility in post-war Wales – evaluating whether the emergence of new opportunities created by changes in education and employment overpowered the historic influence of location and family background on life trajectories.

Tom Avery

My role is to enable research that makes a difference locally. I’m interested in anything place-based, co-created, or community led, where the role of the researcher is to facilitate rather than lead. I enjoy matching up disciplines and agencies and approaches to work together to enhance each other, so I’m perhaps more interested in methodologies.

That said, I was trained as an educational linguist and critical ethnographer working with refugee communities, so at my core I will always be interested in issues of inclusion, representation, and speaking to power.

Well-being is high up on the Welsh agenda, with public bodies across Wales required to assess and improve local well-being. I am working with Dr Annie Tubadji to help Public Services Boards think about how their well-being work results in productivity outcomes. builds on Annie’s work in cultural economics, which explores the roles of effective measurement and development of cultural and social capital in regional development.

Jo

I’m a Project Officer leading Swansea University’s place-based agenda through the Local Challenges Research Office (LCRO). I focus on research projects, partnership building, and civic mission activities across South and West Wales.

Alongside Emily Adams, I’m one of the key contacts for those working with and within communities across the region, building on my extensive experience delivering third sector services. I’m passionate about platforming community voices and widening access through my projects.
I’ve worked on numerous collaborative projects, including several Doctoral Training Partnerships, both in Yorkshire and Swansea.

Sarah

I’m Co-Director of the Local Challenges Research Office and a Professor in the field of gendered harms in the Department of Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy at Swansea University.

Before working in academia, I worked in Public Health within community settings, supporting young mums and later young dads on a range of co-produced activities and projects around safer spaces, sexual health, housing, and more. Working with these groups and local partners helped us make visible the barriers to education, employment, and leisure opportunities, often using filmmaking, performance, and other creative mediums.

I’m passionate about finding ways to support community-driven action and collaborative working. This role enables me to work alongside Dr Christala Sophocleous and the team, lending our skills and experience to help people achieve lasting change — both individually and collectively — while promoting a greater understanding of lived experiences at various policy and practice levels.

Emmanuela

I’m a Project Officer at Swansea University’s Local Challenges Research Office, where I provide comprehensive administrative and operational support across all phases of research project delivery — from planning and implementation through to reporting and closure.

With a strong background in project coordination, stakeholder engagement, and compliance, I play a key role in maintaining project schedules, preparing documentation, supporting budget tracking, and facilitating both internal and external communication. My work contributes to the strategic advancement of research initiatives that address pressing local and regional challenges, with a focus on effective data-driven decision-making and collaborative partnerships.

Christala

I’m Co-Director of the LCRO and a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy in the Department of Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy at Swansea University. Together with Sarah, I provide strategic leadership to our centre.

I’ve had a long-term interest in the voluntary sector, its relationship with public services, and the power of communities to enrich our lives. Over the past 40 years, I’ve volunteered, worked in, with, and researched the voluntary sector and community organisations. I’m committed to supporting communities to use public policy for local benefit and ensuring that marginalised voices are heard in decision-making processes.

Sitting at the intersection of the university, communities, and public policy, LCRO gives me a unique opportunity to bring these interests together and foster collaborative work across agencies and sectors within the south-west region of Wales.