FRAMEWORKS & MODELS
The model we work through, and the frameworks beneath it.
Everything Elysium London does runs through one model, grounded in four practitioner frameworks and five years of direct delivery across NHS Trusts, ICSs, universities and national funders.
The Inclusive Research Collaborative
Inclusive research keeps being rebuilt from scratch, project by project, and lost when the funding ends. Responsibility for it sits scattered across engagement, EDI and involvement teams, with no accountable home, and communities are consulted again and again without seeing what changed.
The Inclusive Research Collaborative is the infrastructure Elysium London was founded to build: a small, practitioner-led intermediary that works between communities, universities, NHS and ICS bodies, funders and local authorities. It belongs to none of them. It does not replace what any of them already has. It shifts power to communities, and holds the connective work that no single organisation is resourced to carry, steady as projects, funding and people change.
It shifts power to communities in three ways
Stewardship. We hold inclusive research to standards that last beyond any single project: payment, credit, real decision-making, and methods that stand up to scrutiny.
Translation. We carry community insight into institutional decisions, and institutional requirements back to communities, so both sides act on the same understanding.
Capability-building. We build the skills and paid roles that stay in place when a project moves on.
The model is set out in full in our 2026 white paper, The Inclusive Research Collaborative →
BENEATH THE MODEL
Four practitioner frameworks.
The Interspace Framework
Meaningful inclusive research happens in the space between institutional power and community experience, where a practitioner is neither fully inside the system nor fully outside it. The framework is a structured way to work in that space and carry community reality into forms that hold institutional weight.
- •Dual legitimacy: credibility that holds in both the institution and the community
- •Fluid translation: carrying language and values in both directions
- •Tension as insight: treating friction and hesitation as data
- •Design from the edge: shaping the work with those furthest from it, from the outset
The RCA Model
A practical sequence for authentic engagement in communities that are under-represented in research, or over-researched without benefit returning. Trust is earned in order, and the access at the end cannot be rushed.
- •Relationships: reciprocity built and sustained over time
- •Credibility: proximity, cultural humility and lived experience
- •Access: the conversations and spaces that trust opens
The Continuum Model
Participation treated as a commitment across the whole research lifecycle, not a single consultation moment. The model is context-dependent rather than a checklist, adopted where the resources and governance to share power are in place.
- •Co-design: communities shaping the question, not only answering it
- •Co-delivery: shared ownership of the fieldwork
- •Co-analysis: making meaning of the findings together
- •Co-dissemination: deciding together what is shared, and how
Pracademic Translation
The skill of aligning academic, practitioner and community perspectives so a single study can hold all three. The translation is structural, making evidence usable for practitioners and practitioner insight legible to the institutions that shape priorities and funding.
- •Timelines: reconciling academic, delivery and community rhythms
- •Power: surfacing who holds decision rights, and where
- •Decision-making: aligning how choices are reached across partners
- •Success: agreeing what counts as a good outcome for each side
PUBLISHED RESEARCH
Practice. Diagnosis. Operationalisation.
Elysium London’s intellectual contribution spans three papers, each building on the last. Together they move from conceptual clarity to structural diagnosis to operational standards.
PAPER ONE
Strategic Frameworks for Inclusive Research
2025 · Published
Formalised the four practitioner frameworks drawn from direct delivery: Interspace, RCA, Continuum, and Pracademic Translation. Grounded in five years of applied work across NHS, academic, and community settings.
PAPER TWO
The Inclusive Research Collaborative
March 2026 · Published
A structural analysis of why inclusive research remains fragile across the UK research ecosystem. Identifies four recurring failures and sets out The Inclusive Research Collaborative, the intermediary Elysium London was founded to build, as dedicated infrastructure for South London.
PAPER THREE
Inclusive Research Standards
In Development
The operational layer. Defines the standards that underpin credible inclusive research practice and provides implementation guidance for institutional adoption.
Stay Updated with Future Publications
ACADEMIC FOUNDATIONS
Grounded in established research traditions.
Elysium London’s frameworks are developed in practice, but they are not developed in isolation. Each draws on established academic traditions that have shaped how inclusive research is understood, designed, and delivered.
Paulo Freire and Critical Pedagogy
Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed remains a central text in participatory and emancipatory research. His emphasis on dialogue, critical consciousness (conscientização), and the co-creation of knowledge between educator and learner laid the groundwork for many participatory methodologies. These principles inform the reflective practices, power-aware facilitation, and participant framing at Elysium London, where community members are positioned as knowledge-holders, not data points.
Community-Based Participatory Research
CBPR, defined by Israel et al. (1998), promotes co-learning, mutual benefit, and long-term commitment between researchers and communities. Its lifecycle-based structure, spanning co-design, co-delivery, co-analysis, and co-dissemination, directly informs the Continuum Model. CBPR also provides a methodological foundation for shared governance, capacity-building, and ethical accountability embedded in our approach.
Intersectionality
Developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw and expanded by scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks, intersectionality is a framework for understanding the layered nature of discrimination and power. In research, it helps avoid reductionist approaches that treat communities as homogenous. It demands attention to how race, gender, class, disability, and other factors intersect to shape lived experience, essential when designing inclusive research that seeks insight without erasing complexity.
Implementation Science and Boundary-Spanning
The PARIHS framework (Kitson et al.) demonstrates that effective implementation requires alignment of evidence, context, and facilitation. Greenhalgh’s work on co-creation and research impact (2015-2016) reinforces that durable relationships, shared governance, and long-term facilitative capacity are essential. The literature on boundary-spanning roles (Williams, 2002; Gittell et al., 2008) provides important validation for the Interspace Framework and our positioning between institutions and communities.
UK institutional reference points
Elysium London’s frameworks operate alongside the principal UK institutional standards for inclusive research. These include the NIHR INCLUDE framework for under-served group inclusion, the UK Standards for Public Involvement, the PHE and NHS England family of community-centred approaches, the Marmot Principles for health equity, and the TLAP Ladder of Co-production. The four Elysium frameworks are designed to operate within and extend these standards, providing the practitioner-led translation work that turns institutional commitment into delivered practice.
Our published white papers also engage with the wider UK evidence base, including NIHR’s Going the Extra Mile review (2015), Wellcome’s What Researchers Think About the Culture They Work In (2020), Ocloo and Matthews (2016) on participation and power, Mockford et al. (2012) and Brett et al. (2014) on involvement, and the Marmot Review (2010; 2020) on the structural determinants of health inequality. This body of work collectively demonstrates that inclusive research cannot depend on goodwill or isolated panels; it requires institutional arrangements that embed responsibility for inclusive practice within the system itself.
Interested in how these frameworks apply to your work?
Every Elysium London engagement is designed around the specific inclusive research challenge an institution faces. A free thirty-minute scoping call is the starting point.