Lived Experience Leadership in Inclusive Research

Background and Aims Previous research has shown that it is important that community researchers are involved in research on topics that affect them. Our article shows that it is also important that community researchers have leadership roles in these projects. Methods We present two leadership stories from community researchers on a project about preventing and addressing everyday harm in the lives of people with cognitive disability. We think about how community researcher leadership in these stories positively changed the way we worked inside and outside our research project. To do the research, we used records from our team meetings and recorded our conversations as we thought about these ideas together (programme data). Results This article shows that when community researchers take a lead in inclusive research projects, there are many benefits to the culture, organisation and processes in the project. Conclusion The benefits to research projects from inclusive leadership help quality of the research and also the research team members. The benefits also spread beyond the project, shaping how people work in other areas of their professional lives.