Seye Abimbola and co-authors argue for a transformation in global health research and practice in the post-COVID-19 world.

Doreen Tembo and colleagues argue that small changes as well as larger system-wide changes can strengthen citizens’ contribution to knowledge in health research

The field of community psychology has for decades concerned itself with the theory and practice of bottom-up emancipatory efforts to tackle health inequalities and other social injustices, often assuming a consensus around values of equality, tolerance and human rights. However, recent global socio-political shifts, particularly the individualisation of neoliberalism and the rise of intolerant, exclusionary politics, have shaken those assumptions, creating what many perceive to be exceptionally hostile conditions for emancipatory activism. This special thematic section brings together a diverse series of articles which address how health and social justice activists are responding to contemporary conditions, in the interest of re-invigorating community psychology’s contribution to emancipatory efforts. The current article introduces our collective conceptualisation of these ‘changing times’, the challenges they pose, and four openings offered by the collection of articles. Firstly, against the backdrop of neoliberal hegemony, these articles argue for a return to community psychology’s core principle of relationality. Secondly, articles identify novel sources of disruptive community agency, in the resistant identities of nonconformist groups, and new, technologically-mediated communicative relations. Thirdly, articles prompt a critical reflection on the potentials and tensions of scholar-activist-community relationships. Fourthly, and collectively, the articles inspire a politics of hope rather than of despair. Building on the creativity of the activists and authors represented in this special section, we conclude that the environment of neoliberal individualism and intolerance, rather than rendering community psychology outdated, serves to re-invigorate its core commitment to relationality, and to a bold and combative scholar-activism.

This article argues that community health psychology's core strategy of 'community mobilisation' is in need of renewal and proposes a new way of conceptualising community health action. Taking the Occupy movement as an example, we critique modernist understandings of community mobilisation, which are based on instrumental action in the service of a predetermined goal. Aiming to re-invigorate the 'process' tradition of community health psychology, we explore possibilities of an open-ended, anti-hierarchical and inclusive mode of community action, which we label 'trusting the process'. The gains to be made are unpredictable, but we suggest that the risk is worth taking.