Building Inclusive Futures

The project, "Building Inclusive Futures: Key Highlights in Establishing a Trans Research Agenda through Collaborative Engagement in Ireland," attempts to shift the paradigm of research being conducted on the transgender and gender diverse (TGD) community to being conducted with and by them.

Adopting a community-based participatory design, the study conducted five focus groups with 19 TGD individuals across Ireland, collaboratively exploring their priorities in Healthcare, Social Wellbeing, and Legal Matters. The analysis revealed ten interconnected themes that expose a profound disconnect between Ireland's progressive legal reputation and the TGD community's lived reality. Key findings include systemic failures within the healthcare and justice systems, a significant gap between legal rights on paper and their practical, day-to-day implementation, and the damaging impact of public misinformation.

Crucially, the project produced a foundational, community-defined research agenda composed of 40 community-developed research questions. This roadmap urgently calls for future academic inquiry to be ethical, intersectional, and client-centric, focusing on positive outcomes and moving beyond deficit-focused models (like merely measuring reduced suicide risk) towards research that enables TGD people to thrive. The findings provide stakeholders with for relevant policy, social, and clinical practice research improvements.