MARY HODGSON

What I am working on at the moment?

I work across a range of projects understanding structural inequality and attempts to challenge it including civic activism, and participation in cities and social innovations. My focus most recently has been on understanding the social and tacit quality of innovation and change in communities.

Why I wanted to join the Participatory City Global Advisory?

I’m delighted to join Participatory City’s Advisory Group as it will offer people a way to explore and iterate new ideas, for us to understand the value of a society where people have opportunities to participate in a way that they want to and makes sense to them.  I hope that by joining the Advisory I can use my experience to support the iterations and learning, but also recognise that I’ll learn a lot.

A little bit about my background

I’m currently Director of Research at The Young Foundation in Bethnal Green, London. I look after our wide range of research, and by background I’m a trained ethnographer with a PhD in Anthropology. My interests are in working in different cultural and organisational contexts to understand inequality and politics around change and belonging, including homelessness, regeneration and how equitable change occurs. I’ve specialised in leading innovative projects focused around widening participation and principles of knowledge exchange, whether through setting up a live digital archive crowdsourcing community knowledge about the Olympics or running the first major ethnographic longitudinal look at wellbeing in insecure housing.