Blogs & conversations - The Churchill Fellowship
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Blogs & conversations

Churchill Fellows offer their views and advice on topical issues, based on global research and UK activities.

To connect with a Fellow, please go to their Profile page. To find related content, click the tag under each item below. To receive regular blog alerts, sign up at the foot of this page.

If you are a Fellow and would like to write a blog for us, please email digital@churchillfellowship.org to discuss the topic you have in mind.

Blogs & conversations

Building together: rethinking teacher wellbeing and career sustainability

During her Churchill Fellowship in Ghana, Dr Chiedza Ikpeh explored how teacher wellbeing grows through community, adaptability, and shared responsibility. Speaking with teachers, she how collective approaches help educators thrive, even in challenging conditions. Witnessing this resilience reshaped how she understands teaching and what allows careers to be sustained over time, and Chiedza is now bringing this learning into her research and development work with teachers across the UK.

By Chiedza Ikpeh, 12 February 2026

Blogs & conversations

Building together: rethinking teacher wellbeing and career sustainability

During her Churchill Fellowship in Ghana, Dr Chiedza Ikpeh explored how teacher wellbeing grows through community, adaptability, and shared responsibility. Speaking with teachers, she how collective approaches help educators thrive, even in challenging conditions. Witnessing this resilience reshaped how she understands teaching and what allows careers to be sustained over time, and Chiedza is now bringing this learning into her research and development work with teachers across the UK.

By Chiedza Ikpeh, 12 February 2026

Blogs & conversations

In conversation with Darren Way: From gang intervention to pioneering research unit

We spoke to Darren Way about how a Churchill Fellowship helped shape a new model of long-term youth intervention – from opening a charity with £10, two chairs, and an empty shopfront, to building Streets of Growth into a nationally recognised organisation supporting thousands of young people. Darren reflects on learning from pioneering community projects in the USA, putting that learning into practice in East London, and why he is now launching a research and policy centre to influence how youth harm prevention is understood, funded, and delivered in the UK.

By Darren Way, 5 February 2026

Blogs & conversations

Mark Damazer: Stepping into the role of chair

Mark Damazer reflects on his first weeks as Chair of the Churchill Fellowship, from reading and scoring this year’s applications to engaging with the scale, diversity, and generosity of ideas coming forward from across the UK. He shares how the Fellowship connects people rooted in communities nationwide, what he has learned from seeing the process up close, and his ambitions to build on this work – including through the Activate Fund – as the Fellowship enters its next chapter.

Blogs & conversations

Following the questions: a Fellow's journey

From an off-the-cuff question as a teacher to lasting change across policy and practice, Sarah Beresford traces how curiosity shaped her Churchill Fellowship and everything that followed. She reflects on learning from other countries, turning insight into action, and how asking the right questions has helped centre children’s voices in the criminal justice system.

By Sarah Beresford, 22 January 2026

Blogs & conversations

Supporting adolescent mental health in schools

Through his Churchill Fellowship, Charlie Samuda explored how schools in the USA, Canada, and South Korea are responding to the adolescent mental health crisis. Visiting over 30 organisations and schools, he examined how independent guidance, curriculum design, counselling, and safety systems can help schools support students more effectively. He reflects on what England could learn from these approaches as pressures on schools continue to grow.

By Charlie Samuda, 15 January 2026

Blogs & conversations

From Prisons to Community Studios: Fellows’ Blogs from 2025

As 2025 draws to a close, we’ve selected a range of Fellows’ blogs that capture the learning and perspectives they shared throughout the year. Covering topics from domestic abuse and criminal justice to arts, health, and innovation, these reflections show how Fellows are applying international insights in practical ways across the UK. Together, they offer a window into the conversations and connections shaping their ongoing work.

Blogs & conversations

In Conversation with Sophia Alexandra Hall: Empowering care-experienced voices in the media

We spoke to Churchill Fellow Sophia Alexandra Hall about how her Fellowship helped shape her trauma-informed interviewing toolkit, now used across major UK newsrooms. Drawing on her lived experience and 50 interviews in the USA, she reflects on the need for safer, more empowering media practices for care-experienced and other under-represented people. She also shares how this work has grown through training, conference speaking, and an expanding public platform at Big Issue.

By Sophia Alexandra Hall, 4 December 2025

Blogs & conversations

Later living that makes the most of every moment

Amid growing pressures across housing, health, and care, Churchill Fellows Graham Russell and Oona Goldsworthy argue that the lessons from their Fellowships – integrated commissioning, mixed communities, and stronger collaboration – are needed more urgently than ever. They highlight how Brunelcare, the care charity they both work at, is beginning to apply these approaches, from reablement and redevelopment to community-focused work that aims to improve later living.

By Graham Russell ~ Oona Goldsworthy, 20 November 2025

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