Welcome to this special issue of the International Practice Development Journal. The issue has been sponsored by the International Community of Practice for Person-centred Practice and all papers submitted went through the usual double-blind peer review as set out in the journal’s guidelines. Unsurprisingly, the topic of this special issue is research and scholarship around person-centred practice.

To set the scene, I offer you some background to the International Community of Practice for Person-centred Practice (PcP ICoP). It is an international community, mainly of academics who are interested in advancing knowledge in the field of person-centred practice. Note here that ‘practice’ is taken as being in any field: care, education, research, management, policy and so on. The ICoP is hosted by Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh and co-ordinated by Professor Brendan McCormack. Partners come from:

• Ulster University, Northern Ireland
• Fontys University of Applied Science, Netherlands
• Buskerud and Vestfold University College, Norway
• University of Buffalo, United States
• University of Technology/Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, Australia
• West Park Healthcare, Toronto, Canada

The Centre for Care Research at Bergen University College, Norway, is also about to join us.
The ICoP co-ordinates a programme of research and scholarship, and supports collaborative publications and presentations as well as a thriving community of practice for doctoral students who are studying aspects of person-centredness – the SICoP. Each of the partner organisations is engaged in teaching/learning, research and scholarship activities connected to person-centred practice – as you can go on to explore in the pages that follow.Finally, everyone at IPDJ and in the ICoP hopes that you find this special issue thought provoking, that it encourages conversation in your workplace and that it inspires you to ask yourself and others how person-centred practice can be more of reality for more people more of the time.