WELCOME

The LSBU Boarding School Research Hub (BSR Hub) is a community of research practice led by Pippa Palmer and a team of researchers, under the ‘Thriving Homes & Habitats’ strand of London South Bank University’s Building Future Communities Research Centre.

The BSR Hub is committed to create a welcoming, accessible environment where a range of diverse views, experiences and research perspectives are equally valued. We aim to bringing together researchers from across all institutions and disciplines, to share knowledge, research strategies, insights and experiences, in order to:

advance inter-disciplinary research into the role of
boarding school as a surrogate for home and evaluate
long-term outcomes for individuals, institutions & society

We will achieve this through convening a community and facilitating research-themed activities that will lead to objective, collaborative and evidence-led research to address gaps in current knowledge.

Our approach is global, systemic and human-centred, and organised around three specialist groups, each with three subgroups, designed to critically examine the socioeconomic, cultural and structural dimensions of boarding school as a system:

TO JOIN

Express interest or apply here

We welcome all academic researchers, public health specialists, psychologists, practitioners and educators with an interest in advancing research into the role of boarding school as a surrogate for home.

We aim to be inclusive - but we also need to ensure a safe community. For ethics reasons, we just ask that participants are actively working, researching, volunteering or retired from an organisation in the field, or a related area.

If you are unsure, please do apply - we always do our best to accommodate individual circumstances.

Once you’ve been accepted as a member, you will be be given a code which will enable you to create a log in to the members’ area. Once you have been accepted as a member - and provided you opt in to emails - you will automatically receive invites to BSR Hub meetings and workshops.

Attendance is entirely voluntary and unremunerated, and there is no obligation to attend. But we hope members will enjoy participating, building our community, and keeping up with research news.

MEMBER SIGN IN

If this is your first time signing in, just enter the unique code we sent you here, and follow the instructions to create your own members account. After you have registered, you’ll receive a few emails from Polln, who hosts the Members’ Area on behalf of LSBU.

Please check these emails (which might be in your spam folder) to:

  • Confirm your registration

  • Verify your email address

  • Give us permission to send you Boarding School Research news, invites and updates

    These emails will come via Polln - but you’ll only ever receive updates about the LSBU BSR Hub.

Once you have set up your own member account, you’ll automatically have access to :

  • BSR Hub Members’ forum

  • Resources and research library

  • Hub research, fundings, news and updates

  • Details of research hub activities & meetings

  • Dedicated areas to engage and explore the themes emerging from our 3 Specialist groups

For application and membership enquiries, including support with logging in, or to publish blogs or resources in the members’ area, please email our BS Research Hub Co-ordinator, Rachel Wickremer.

Meet the Team

  • Pippa Palmer

    BSR HUB RESEARCH DIRECTOR

    Roles: Founder / Director, Polln | Senior Strategic Lead, LSBU | Director, Boarding School Concern
    Personal research focus: systems change at the intersection of policy, place, and practice; home as a health determinant, fuel poverty, retrofit, and a just transition; socioeconomic, cultural, and individual impacts of boarding school.

  • Katie Betteridge

    BSR HUB RESEARCHER

    BSR Role: Research & Workshop Facilitation. Specialist Group Lead: Rebalancing Narratives.
    Personal research focus: PhD Doctoral Student | Lecturer in Criminology, LSBU | dementia, policy & care in the home; change to sense of self and belonging when home becomes an institution

  • Rachel Wickremer

    BSR HUB CO-ORDINATOR & RESEARCHER

    BSR Role: Member Co-ordination. Research & Workshop Facilitation. Specialist group lead: The Institution | Personal research focus: institutional care and the developing child; housing & health inequalities

The BSR Hub is hosted by Polln, a research consultancy founded by Pippa Palmer, which works closely with LSBU. Hosting through Polln (which is offered without charge) means members have a practical place to connect and collaborate, whilst avoiding the inevitable complexities of University IT barriers.