Dani Hutcheon is a Research Fellow working as part of the Communities, Citizenship and Participation research theme at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health, GCU. Her research focuses on community empowerment, sustainability, health and wellbeing at a policy and practice level. Dani is a mixed-methods researcher who holds an MA (Hons) in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh and PhD in Public Health from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU).
Dani is currently the Principal Investigator on the British Academy and Nuffield Foundation funded ‘Rural Assets: Policy and Practice Insights from the Devolved Nations’, which aims to understand the impacts of the processes of community asset acquisition upon the empowerment, resilience, and well-being of rural communities across the UK.
Previously, Dani was the lead researcher on the Big Lottery-funded ‘Sheds for Sustainable Development’ project, looking at the developmental challenges of Men’s Sheds in Scotland, as well as the health and wellbeing impacts of shed activities. Previous to that, Danielle was also part of the MRC/ESRC funded CommonHealth project, which aimed to develop methods to evidence social enterprise as a public health intervention. As part of this role, she focused on the health and well-being effects of social enterprise activity in rural and fragile communities in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. In particular, the role of community enterprises in addressing social isolation and loneliness.
Her interests include social entrepreneurship, community-based health interventions, community empowerment policy, mixed and participatory research methods, research design and ethical practice.
Dani has published her research on the impacts and sustainability of community-led organisations in peer-reviewed journals, such as BMC Public Health and Health and Place. She has also written and published a Men’s Shed Toolkit for UK and Ireland used by third sector support agencies and community groups across the country. Dani is also an Associate Editor for the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship.
Dani has previously taught and supervised students on modules across social innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as research design. She is currently part of the module teaching team for Global Social Entrepreneurship.