DrMary-Rose Puttick

Dr Mary-Rose Puttick joined the Institute for Community Research and Development (ICRD) in November 2022 and leads the Migration and Mobilities strand of research. She is currently working as a Research Fellow on two Arts Council England-funded projects with the ICRD: the Artists' Care project, exploring ways to develop workplace interventions to support the wellbeing of freelance artists working in prisons and secure immigration settings; and the Wolverhampton City of Youth Culture project, a co-created project with young people that aims to improve life outcomes for 7-25 year olds. Mary-Rose is also a member of the ICRD's evaluation team for the West Midlands Violence Reduction Partnership. evaluating trauma-informed practice in policing and education contexts.

Between 2022-2024 Mary-Rose was Principal Investigator for a British Council-funded project (ELTRA award) ‘Waiting for School: exploring transitory educational provision for children and young people from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds’, focused on developing support for newly arrived young people living in temporary accommodation settings waiting for a school place. This was a co-produced project with artists and family liaison workers, as well as teachers working in Schools of Sanctuary across the West Midlands. During 2023-2024 Mary-Rose was also a Co-investigator for a Paul Hamlyn Foundation-funded project for the City of Sanctuary charity to evaluate their Schools of Sanctuary programme.

All of Mary-Rose’s research activities interconnect with her voluntary experiences over the last seven years in the third sector where she continues to work as an Asylum Guide for a Refugee Action project. She recently worked as a Research Officer for Brushstrokes charity: leading the Barrow Cadbury-funded Better Pathways project (2023-2024) that aimed to develop better pathways to support for people living with the No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) condition. This was a co-produced project in which people from NRPF lived experience groups, as well as NRPF frontline practitioners in the third sector and local authorities co-created a 4-part policy briefing series and a West Midlands NRPF Charter of Best Practice. Mary-Rose is also currently working as a community researcher on a project with the University of Birmingham, funded by their QR Policy Support Fund to develop a Regional Refugee Integration Strategy in collaboration with the West Midlands Strategic Migration partnership and regional stakeholders.

Prior to joining the ICRD, Mary-Rose completed her doctoral studies at Birmingham City University (BCU) in which she explored family literacy provision in the third sector from the perspectives of women from refugee and newly arrived backgrounds, using a participatory arts-based ethnographic approach. At BCU, she worked as a Research Assistant in the Centre for the Practice and Study of Culture in Education (CSPACE) on two Erasmus+ funded projects ‘Collaborative Community Mapping: exploring young people’s learning experiences during Covid-19’ (CoMAP) (2021-2023) and Open Schools Doors (2017-2019), both in partnership with Birmingham City of Sanctuary charity. She also worked on an interdisciplinary team for the ’Enhancing Teacher Education Programme’ (ETEP) funded by the Vietnamese Government-World Bank, focusing on teacher development in the area of special education needs and disabilities education in Vietnam.