These events have emerged from research group members recognising a series of shared challenges when accounts of ‘lived experience’ are used to develop and inform research impact, social policy, and social justice practices across a diverse range of policy and research areas including poverty, social work practice, diaspora communities, domestic violence, trafficking and workplace racism. These include: a lack of meaningful or diverse inclusion; the assumed binary positions of academics/policymakers and those with ‘lived experience’; and/or when accounts of ‘lived experience’ are purposely selected to support existing political or policy agendas.