IVAR and Ubele are delighted to introduce the recipients of the 2026 Jane Hatfield Award, which supports two teams of young researchers to investigate critical community, social action or social justice issues.
Meet the 2026 Researchers
The Topics
Translating Creative Health: Storytelling, Evaluation and Integration between the Voluntary Sector and the NHS
Zeba and Xaira will explore how voluntary and community organisations specialising in creative health play a vital role in supporting mental health and wellbeing in communities. However, many of these organisations face challenges in securing funding and communicating impact to NHS commissioners.
Through interviews and a collaborative knowledge exchange roundtable, this research will explore how BME-led voluntary organisations practice creative health, where misalignments exists, and how to bridge the gaps. The project aims to produce practical insights and recommendations that support stronger relationships between the voluntary sector and the NHS and recognise the value of community-led approaches to care.
‘Play To Place’
Pim and Kal’s research project explores how digital tools – such as gamified platforms, chat rooms, and other participatory “cyber” spaces can support and strengthen community-led nature place-making activities. Even as top-down volunteering drops, participation hasn’t disappeared –it’s playing out in informal, place-based action like in community growing, guerrilla gardening, mutual aid networks, neighbourhood greening, and more.
Focusing on young people facing structural barriers to participation and centring Black, people of colour, migrant, and other underrepresented groups, the research investigates how playful and participatory digital tools can lower barriers to involvement, mobilise local action, and open pathways from informal engagement into sustained civic participation within the voluntary sector.
The Researchers
Zeba Kokan
Zeba is a participatory researcher, committed to co-producing knowledge across diverse lived experiences. Her work spans mental health, Indigenous health and community wellbeing, and is shaped by the legacy of her grandmothers, Sadiqa Begum and Iqbal Unnisa, matriarchs from Tamil Nadu, India. She currently explores how participatory methods can centre the traditions and experiences of those closest to the research.
Xaira Olaifa-Adebayo
Xaira is a multidisciplinary researcher, consultant and musician, specialising in cultural histories and medical sociology. Their work is shaped by black women and their cultural productions, disability studies, and questions around race, identity and colonialism. They explore creativity as a form of narrative reclamation, most recently through a short film about their sister’s experience with sickle cell and medical negligence.
Kal Arias and Pim Sullivan-Tailor
Kal is a guerrilla gardener, technologist, nature rights campaigner and food grower. She currently campaigns for the right to grow, nature rights and tech for good, and is researching how technology and nature can work together from biomaterials and AI to robotics, gamification and other nature-based tech.
Pim is an environmental scientist, climate activist and science communicator, passionate about making ecological knowledge accessible across communities and generations. She currently works across climate education, grassroots organising and international policy, exploring how systems thinking and interdisciplinary approaches can drive meaningful environmental change.
Continuing Jane Hatfield’s Legacy
The Award is named in memory and celebration of Jane Hatfield — Trustee of IVAR from 2006 and Chair from 2015 until 2021. Jane was widely respected for her intellect, passion, and unwavering commitment to strengthening IVAR’s work and that of the broader voluntary sector. She championed inclusive leadership and actively shaped IVAR’s support for early-career researchers and community-focused learning.
For the last four years, the Jane Hatfield Award has supported early-career researchers from Black and minoritised backgrounds explore issues in social action and social justice. The Award links to The Ubele Initiative and IVAR’s broader shared aim to support research that can (directly or indirectly) help in strengthening the UK voluntary sector.
Ben Cairns, IVAR Director says:
“Jane was an inspiration to everyone at IVAR and across the voluntary sector. She consistently pushed us to think more deeply about how we could support emerging researchers and activists. Aliyah, Lucien, Moet and Sholen are tackling fundamental questions about racial inequality and the role of the voluntary sector in supporting more just and inclusive communities. This is just the sort of rigorous, community-focused research that Jane championed – and a legacy we seek to continue.”
Yvonne Fields, Ubele CEO, says:
“Ubele is deeply honoured to continue this vital collaboration with IVAR, and to play a role in nurturing the next generation of researchers, young individuals who are courageously exploring the issues that shape their lives and communities. The insights and knowledge cultivated over the coming year will serve as a robust foundation for future, more ambitious research endeavours. Moreover, this journey will foster a wide array of transferable skills, from collaborative peer engagement to research design, analytical thinking, and a deepened understanding of their chosen subjects.”