Mr Dave Beck
- Lecturer (Community Development) (Social Justice Place and Lifelong Education)
telephone: 01413301846
email: Dave.Beck@glasgow.ac.uk
Research interests
My research interests lie in the field of Community Development. In particular, I am interested in the contributions community leaders make to the development of community capacity and sustainable social change. I am also interested in how the theories of Freire and Gramsci can act as an explanatory framework for the context of Community Development practice and provide insights into empowering practice for social change. Finally I am interested in how the concept of Social Capital is understood and used by policy makers, Community Developement practitioners and local people and how this concept can be used to ensure the development of strongly bonded communities which are able to analyse and transform their social situations.
Research collaborations
I am currently working with Dr Lisa Ehrich, Senior Lecturer in the School of Learning and Professional Studies at Queensland University of Technology on a project to explore the dynamics of community leadership and its contribution to social change. The project aims to:
- Develop a research based partnership between staff from QUT and staff from the University of Glasgow and thus expand both partners’ knowledge of community leadership through a sharing and collaborative process
- Gain greater understanding of and knowledge about community leadership by giving voice to the stories of a sample of community leaders in Queensland Australia and the West of Scotland
- Present the initial findings of the community leaders’ stories to a wider group of community leaders in Scotland to seek their critical reflection and responses
- Based on feedback presented by community leaders, disseminate the findings through international conferences and write a refereed journal articles
Consulting and advice
- Working with STRADA, the national drugs education project to train and support their trainers, development of training module and facilitating their first annual evaluation
- Supporting twenty managers from drug projects across Scotland to carry out research into the effectiveness of their provision. This is a partnership project between STRADA and the University of Glasgow’s Business school
- I acted as a facilitator on the Scottish Executive’s Working Together Learning Together – a programme designed to support and develop partnership working in Scotland’s Social Inclusion Partnerships
- Developed an Operational Plan for Glasgow’s Equal Access strategy. This identified how services could be reorientated to provide a better service for people furthest removed from the employment market
- Worked with a community arts group to develop a common vision and set of values and to restructure their organisation to be more effective in future work
- I have also worked with Base 75 – a health project for street prostitutes, the Simon Community, Govanhill Health Forum and the Greater Glasgow Health Board’s Women’s Health Team to help them explore and re-focus their work