2026 theme: Care inequalities: Rethinking Support for Children, Families, and Adults
Dates: Monday 7th – Friday 12th September 2026
Location: Sheffield
The Centre for Care Summer School is a week-long residential programme in Sheffield in September 2026, for students whose PhD studies align with the themes and research of the Centre for Care. The theme of the 2026 Summer School is ‘Care inequalities: Rethinking Support for Children, Families, and Adults’.
The Summer School provides an opportunity for PhD students, particularly those towards the end of their studies, to present their work and receive feedback from mentors, Centre for Care team members and other participants. The programme will also include lectures on theoretical and methodological topics given by Centre for Care team members and guest speakers, and workshops focusing on career development and other skills. Students will have a mentor from the Centre for Care, who will work with them during the week and be their key contact.
Keynote speaker announced: Dr Mark Wilberforce, University of York
Applications are now closed.
Previous Sumer School attendees said this:
I was very impressed by how well we were looked after and the activities in the evening. During bowling or walking tours we really got to know our colleagues and the CfC staff which enabled me to make meaningful connection and establishing a network of people who have similar research interests as me.
The summer school was absolutely brilliant, it was extremely well-organised and aspect of the summer school was very well thought through. It make me feel special to be part of the CfC community.
The CfC summer school was a real highlight for me, I loved meeting other students and learning about how broad care research could be. I’d not really looked at care theory before but it inspired me to look further into and really challenged some of my thinking
About the Centre for Care
The Centre for Care is a research-focused collaboration between the Universities of Sheffield, Birmingham, Kent and Oxford, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Office for National Statistics, Carers UK, the National Children’s Bureau, and the Social Care Institute for Excellence. Funded by the ESRC (Economic & Social Research Council), our work aims to make a positive difference in how care is experienced and provided in the UK and internationally by producing new evidence and thinking for policymakers, care sector organisations and people who need or provide care. In studying care, we focus on ways of improving wellbeing outcomes and on the networks, communities and systems that support and affect people’s daily lives, working closely with external partners.
We focus on support, services and protections to promote the wellbeing of vulnerable or disabled people of all ages (children and adults), and the networks, communities and systems that affect them. We don’t include childcare in this definition.
