This is a story, a kind of map, about a study we co-produced on prison peer support work. The social science community call these mapping stories methodology papers. We have tried to write this one in an informal (less academic) style to appeal to a broad audience – including people who live or have lived in prisons and who may not have had access to further education. ‘We’, the authors, are four people interested in prisons. Two of us became interested having lived parts of our lives in prison, two of us became interested by studying prisons at university. We met as part of a co-authorship project, which was originally made up of five former prisoner researchers and three academic researchers. Having published our original study in 2023, we decided to write about our pioneering work together. (All eight original co-authors were invited to co-write this methodology paper and four of the team decided to do so). We hope the method we introduce will be useful to those interested in capturing (often traumatic) lived experiences in a way that values and centres those most impacted, and that we address the concern that people with lived experience often only emerge in research as subjects, rather than authors.UKRI FLF grant number MR/T019085/
