The 2025 Voluntary Sector and Volunteering Research Conference took place at Bayes Business School in early September, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and civil society leaders from across the UK and beyond. This year’s theme—Creating Change Together: Civil society working beyond sector and organisational boundaries—framed a dynamic and thought-provoking programme.
The conference opened with a plenary session led by Professor Stephen Osborne (University of Edinburgh), who explored the implications of an ecosystemic approach for the third sector. His presentation was followed by a panel response from voluntary sector leaders, offering grounded reflections from practice. Delegates then engaged with a packed schedule of parallel sessions covering a wide range of topics, including ‘Ethics, democracy and power’; ‘Civil society across time and place’; and ‘Volunteering, participation and social action’.
The first day of the conference was dedicated to new researchers, and I was pleased to present my PhD research, which explores how trust, power, and knowledge sharing are negotiated within collaborative participatory research (CPR) projects. Both the session and the wider conference offered a constructive and supportive space to connect with peers, receive feedback, and reflect on how my work contributes to broader debates and theoretical developments within the interdisciplinary field of voluntary sector research.
The Voluntary Sector Studies Network hopes to host further events to explore key themes from the conference around cross-sector collaboration, leadership, and ecosystemic approaches. To find out more about and join the Network, visit: https://www.vssn.org.uk.