Doing Research Differently: The Case of the Leicester Hate Crime Project

[From introductory paragraph] For the past two years the Leicester Hate Crime Project has been conducting groundbreaking research into the nature and impact of hate crime. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, this research – Britain’s biggest ever study of hate crime victimisation – has uncovered new and significant insights into the effects of targeted violence and harassment upon victims, families and wider communities. This article provides a brief overview of the project with a particular focus on the methodological challenges the research team faced, and how we overcame these by using more informal and unorthodox methods of engagement with so-called ‘hard to reach’ communities.