Refocus on Recovery 2027 international conference
Conference themes
Our conference will be organised around the following four themes:
Theme 1 – Lived experience leadership
Contributions on topics where people with personal experience of mental health challenges work to create change that benefits others, such as through recovery colleges, peer support, or peer research. This can include descriptions of projects and changes championed and led by lived experience leaders, and reflections on the joys and challenges of lived experience leadership.
Theme 2 – Recovery and community
Contributions that explore the relationship between recovery and communities, including communities that meet in either physical or digital settings. Contributions could consider activities such as the co-production of community initiatives, the use of social prescribing to strengthen communities, and the curation of online mental health communities. We particularly encourage contributions that engage with communities experiencing peripherality, such as those that are physically, economically or socially distant from centres of power.
Theme 3 – Recovery and services
Contributions that examine concepts and interventions underpinning good mental health care, including trauma-informed, recovery-oriented, personalised, and rights-based approaches to professional education, practice and policy, and interventions to support the health and effective practices of mental health workers. This includes contributions on how recovery-oriented services and practices can be evaluated, including discussions of what meaningful change looks like. We welcome contributions describing innovative initiatives, whether at the early stages of conceptualisation, through to completed implementation.
Theme 4 – Recovery beyond mental health
Contributions that explore the application and extension of recovery-oriented practices and concepts to related areas such as substance addiction recovery, in efforts to increase equity and reduce prejudice for minoritised groups, and in settings with additional constraints, such as forensic services. Theme 4 also encompasses the integration of knowledge from outside of mental health into mental health recovery research and practice, and can include critiques of core recovery concepts, or reflections on alternative conceptualisations of recovery.
Abstract submission information
Our abstract submission system will open 30th November 2026, with abstracts due by 28th February 2027. We received 101 abstracts by the due date for Refocus on Recovery 2025, and hence we do not anticipate extending this due date.
We invite abstracts presenting research findings, and also those exploring a topic, for example by presenting reflections on personal experiences or philosophical positions. We welcome submissions across the whole range of ways in which recovery is conceptualised, and we acknowledge and value that recovery may be understood and practised differently across cultures, countries, communities and service settings.
Abstracts can be at most 300 words, and can either be 1) unstructured, or 2) structured into sections on Background, Methods, Findings, and Conclusions. When you submit your abstract, you will be asked which of our four themes it best matches to.
Submissions spanning more than one theme are welcome. In our submission system you will be able to select a primary and a secondary theme. You are welcome to email us at refocusonrecovery@nottingham.ac.uk if you are uncertain about the match of your proposed submission to the conference.