Nick Stanhope

Nick Stanhope is a founder, designer and strategist who works with activists, social entrepreneurs and community organisations that are challenging the way the system works and pushing for fundamental change.

Nick worked as Founder and CEO of design studio Shift for ten years, building start-ups such as BfB Labs, Historypin and Box Chicken to help combat mental illness, social isolation and child obesity; supporting the development of new fields of practice through work such as the Relationships Project and Catalyst; and forming long-term collaborations with partners like Wellcome Trust, Google and Stanford University to generate open research, design new products and services for build stronger ecosystems.

After graduating from Oxford University in 2003, Nick started work as a campaigner and community and youth worker. He spent time with Anti-Slavery International in south and east Africa, children’s disability charity Kids and supported youth social action in South London, before running global campaign movement We Are What We Do from 2009.

Nick is proud to be working as part of Centric and brings his experience in design, start-ups and community work to scaling our immensely powerful community research model.

There’s a lot of signalling going on at the moment when it comes to community engagement and participation in research. A lot of performative policies and actions that continue to keep the people and groups that are the focus of research in subjugated roles, without any real agency or power. Nick believes that Centric is the antidote to this.

“The team is authentic to its bones. This is about research for and by the people, without compromise. And more than that – it’s about how the knowledge and opportunities opened up by high quality research can deliver change on the streets and in people’s lives – driving innovation, fuelling entrepreneurship, creating jobs – through work that continues to be shaped and led by communities themselves.”