From Caravan to Campus: Storytelling as a Bridge Between Research and Policy

Before I ever had a university title, I was already involved in shaping policy. Not through formal reports or committees, but through storytelling, advocacy, and action. One of my proudest early contributions was helping to establish National Men’s Health Week in the UK. Back then, over two decades ago, men’s health was often brushed aside, buried under stigma, silence, and the idea that “real men” just got on with things.

By telling real stories, of fathers, brothers, sons whose lives were cut short or limited by preventable conditions, we changed the conversation. It wasn’t just awareness-raising; it was policy-shaping. New initiatives were created, funding followed, and men’s health finally became a recognised issue in public life. That experience taught me something that has stayed with me ever since: stories don’t just inform. They transform.

Now, as Professor in Practice at Durham University, I work across the humanities to bring that same principle into higher education. My Romani heritage and upbringing in a traditional nomadic community gave me a deep understanding of how stories carry identity, resilience, and belonging. Those early lessons are now the foundation of my academic and public work, showing researchers, students, and policymakers how storytelling can be more than communication. It can be strategy.

I’ve also been fortunate to work with other universities, including Sunderland and East Anglia, where I lead the storytelling element of the ROMLIT project. ROMLIT uses Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller heritage to support literacy in the early years. But it’s about more than reading skills, it’s about representation. It’s about children seeing their own culture and community reflected back with pride. That’s where storytelling really makes a difference: it challenges stereotypes, strengthens education policy, and opens up new possibilities for inclusion.

A big part of my mission is challenging the old deficit model around marginalised communities, the habit of seeing people only in terms of what they lack. Too often, those communities are defined by absence: not enough education, not enough resources, not enough access. What’s missing in that picture are the strengths they already bring: resilience, innovation, deep-rooted knowledge. My own journey, from a caravan upbringing in a community that would be seen as way behind and definitely lacking in terms of mainstream literacy, to national policy work and academia, is a counter-narrative. It shows that lived experience is not a gap. It’s an asset.

This also connects with another group who are often framed through deficit thinking: people over 55. Too frequently, later life is painted as decline or withdrawal, a steady path to oblivion. But the reality is different. More and more people in their fifties, sixties, and beyond are starting businesses, retraining, taking on leadership roles, and entering higher education. My own academic role is proof that stepping into new spaces later in life is not only possible but valuable. Older adults bring with them decades of experience, adaptability, and perspective. Their stories don’t just reflect the past, they actively shape the future.

That’s why storytelling matters so much. It bridges divides, between research and policy, between marginalised voices and mainstream debates, and between generations. Stories carry evidence in ways that reports alone can’t. They give shape to complex issues and make policy human.

Storytelling in Today’s Research-Policy Space

Across the world, we are beginning to see storytelling recognised as a serious part of policy work. For example:

• The International Public Policy Observatory (IPPO) in the UK has been experimenting with case-based storytelling to make academic evidence more accessible to policymakers.
• The UNDP’s “Telling Our Stories” initiative uses community narratives in climate and development policy to highlight the lived realities behind the data.
• In health, projects like Health Foundation’s “Stories as Evidence” programme show how combining qualitative storytelling with statistics can change how policies on ageing, inequality, or social care are designed.

What these efforts share is a recognition that stories are not “soft data.” They are essential complements to numbers and graphs, helping policymakers grasp urgency, human cost, and unintended consequences.

Practical Steps for Policy Actors

Many policy professionals agree with this in principle, but stumble on the practical “what next?” Here are a few starting points:

1. Create story spaces, not just consultation papers. Invite lived-experience storytelling sessions alongside formal evidence submissions. Co-design these with community leaders to build trust.
2. Pair stories with data. Use stories to “frame” the meaning of statistics, begin a briefing with a narrative that shows why the numbers matter.
3. Train for listening, not just reporting. Policy makers often extract stories as “case studies” but miss their richness. Training in narrative listening helps teams hear underlying patterns and assets, not just problems.
4. Fund story collection as infrastructure. Just as data gathering is resourced, so too should community storytelling be recognised as an evidence-building process.
5. Close the loop. When communities share their stories, make sure they hear how those narratives informed decisions. This feedback strengthens trust and future participation.

From caravan to campus, my own journey has been unconventional. But it’s that unconventional path that gives me the freedom to challenge assumptions, amplify unheard voices, and highlight the knowledge that too often gets overlooked. Storytelling is more than a tool, it’s a bridge, a bridge between lived experience and policy, between researchers and communities, and between the wisdom of the past and the possibilities of the future.