Abstract
Networked, intersectoral research partnerships represent one form of university-community collaboration that can respond to and take advantage of the complex and pluralist nature of food systems. Importantly, such partnerships can bring about transformation in many ways: within on-the-ground practice, to scholarly models, and among the perspectives, sense of connectedness, and credibility of individual researchers. This article shares insights on ways in which medium-to-large–scale research partnerships can optimize their transformational potential, specifically through attention to change at the scale of the individual participant. I draw on a set of semi-structured, qualitative interviews with participants in the Food: Locally Embedded, Globally Engaged (FLEdGE) research network, a seven-year, international partnership that brought together over 50 partner organizations and nearly 200 individual participants. Four thematic categories of effects are depicted: active change (to specific individuals and research contexts); latent change (towards future interactions and insights); distribution of leadership (across multiple sites and people); and potential challenges (that may impede or accelerate desired outcomes). Following J.K. Gibson-Graham’s proposal for deploying “thick description and weak theory” (2014), I draw on a number of elements of network theory to help surface insights about individual transformation. Together, they contribute to the growing discourse around network structure, interactivity, and performativity, as well as modes of supporting longer-term food systems transformation.
Highlights
Networked, intersectoral research partnerships represent one form of universitycommunity collaboration that can respond to and take advantage of the complex and pluralist nature of food systems
A networked, intersectoral research partnership is a model that can respond to and take advantage of these parameters. Such partnerships can engender tangible food system transformation in many ways, through both community engagement and the effects of individual participation. This requires that several conditions be present—or intentionally created—that enable transformation within the network’s organizational and governance structures, and among individual participants (Mezirow, 2000; Wallerstein et al, 2020)
I selected participants using the results of a 2018 social network analysis study of FLEdGE, utilizing parameters that included the extent of their engagement within the network, their primary institutional affiliation, and their region of operation (Ontario, rest of Canada, international)
Summary
Intersectoral research partnerships represent one form of universitycommunity collaboration that can respond to and take advantage of the complex and pluralist nature of food systems. I draw on a set of semi-structured, qualitative interviews with participants in the Food: Locally Embedded, Globally Engaged (FLEdGE) research network, a seven-year, international partnership that brought together over 50 partner organizations and nearly 200 individual participants. Gibson-Graham’s proposal for deploying “thick description and weak theory” (2014), I draw on a number of elements of network theory to help surface insights about individual transformation Together, they contribute to the growing discourse around network structure, interactivity, and performativity, as well as modes of supporting longer-term food systems transformation. A networked, intersectoral research partnership is a model that can respond to and take advantage of these parameters Such partnerships can engender tangible food system transformation in many ways, through both community engagement and the effects of individual participation. Due to the scope of the network and the number of people I interviewed, this article does not aim at a definitive portrait of FLEdGE or the change to which it has contributed. Rather, I draw on interviewee reflections about transformation—personal and systemic—to propose ways that researchers might embrace change and, recursively, transform food scholarship and food systems. Among other, more granular variables, this is predicated on: (a) the aptness of network conditions at the outset of research; (b) network members’ openness to self-transformation; and (c) relational feedback among network members and leaders
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