Reflections on the role of Peer Researchers in eating disorders: identifying challenges, best practices, and future directions

Abstract The involvement of people with lived experience has become increasingly prominent across mental health research, with co-production and Peer Researcher roles presented as ways of improving the relevance, ethics, and legitimacy of research. Within eating disorder research, however, the integration of Peer Researchers remains inconsistent and is shaped by a range of structural, cultural, and epistemic barriers. Although a growing literature addresses lived experience involvement in eating disorder research, there has been limited critical examination of how Peer Researcher roles operate within a field marked by stigma, narrow recovery narratives, contested notions of credibility, and constrained resources. This paper offers a critical, experience-informed perspective on Peer Research in eating disorders, drawing on the authors’ lived and professional experience alongside a selective synthesis of scholarship on co-production, lived experience research, and epistemic justice. We identify recurrent challenges in the implementation of Peer Researcher roles, including unequal recruitment and representation, trauma- and stigma-related harms, limited power-sharing, inadequate attention to welfare, uneven training and career development, and the effects of working within a comparatively small and under-resourced field. We argue that meaningful inclusion of Peer Researchers depends not simply on their presence within research teams, but on improving the conditions within which they participate. This includes greater flexibility, shared decision-making, appropriate support, and recognising experiential knowledge as a valuable form of expertise. This paper contributes a framework for understanding these challenges and offers practical considerations for developing ethical, just, and sustainable approaches to Peer Research that will improve the relevance and legitimacy of eating disorder research more broadly.