Karen Laing is Senior Research Associate in the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching, in the School of Education, Communication and Language Science at Newcastle University, UK. She specialises in research that explores how societal structures, institutions and practices impact on vulnerable or disadvantaged children, young people, families and communities. This specifically includes studies on inclusion, partnership working, disadvantage, and participation. Much of her work is evaluation of interventions or practice and policy approaches to enhancing the wellbeing of children, young people and families. Her particular methodological interests, developed over the course of over 50 research projects, are in theory-based approaches, visual methods, and co-produced or participatory research with children and young people, families and communities and those who work with them. She works from a social policy perspective, while crossing disciplinary boundaries in family law, criminology, and education.