Collaborative Research Practice Research Articles

Collaborative research practices in the study of diasporisation: chronotopes of dispersion among Hungarians in Catalonia

ABSTRACT Diasporas and diasporisation have lately been at the centre of interest in sociolinguistic inquiry. Literature on the inclusion of diasporic speakers in academic knowledge production in connection with diasporas is scarce, although this would be of crucial importance to achieve ‘thinking diaspora from below’ (Rosa and Trivedi 2017. “Diaspora and Language.” In The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language, edited by Suresh Canagarajah, 330–346. London: Routledge) when researching sociolinguistic phenomena. In this article, I discuss an ethnographically informed critical sociolinguistic study of diasporisation among Hungarians in Catalonia between 2018 and 2022 in which I applied collaborative research practices with the key participants. These practices consisted of the joint formulation of questions, the creation of a reflexive diasporic space, and feedback provided in the post-fieldwork phase. I address how these methods contributed to the emergence of a chronotopic approach to diasporisation. I argue that the inclusion of the emic perspectives of diasporic speakers through their involvement in the research process is a fruitful way to approach diasporas and diasporisation. Moreover, by paying attention to the needs and interests of the participants, this way of researching on, for, and with the participants also contributes to better understandings of diasporisation.

Art, science, and life: where arts-based research and social-ecological transformation can meet

Arts-based research offers an innovative approach to today’s social-ecological challenges. Many authors ascertain the transformative power of arts-based research lies in its ability to generate holistic and collaborative encounters which facilitate change. To advance critical discussions around arts-based research, the following article opens up pockets of success as well as the limitations and failures of the My Mabopane photovoice project. This project intended to support urban transformation in the City of Tshwane, South Africa, by asking participants to photograph and reflect upon a nearby green space afflicted with various social and environmental challenges. Results suggest alternative ways of knowing, which contribute to transformative learning, can link arts-based research to social-ecological transformation. However, despite this promising pathway, analyses also reveal realizing social-ecological transformation with arts-based research is no walk in the park. Rather problematic assumptions around knowledge and knowledge production, emerging in tensions between art and science, often trump the emancipatory intentions of photovoice. And broader structural challenges, that arts-based research situates itself in and against, pose a strong barrier for social-ecological transformation. In response to these barriers, this article argues for a collaborative arts-based research practice centering community realities on multiple scales via a merging of art, science, and life.

Wider institutional research cultures and their influence on patient and public involvement and engagement in health research – An institutional ethnography

Focus on patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) is increasing in health policy and research governance. PPIE is considered by some to be a democratic right, and by others to be a way to improve health care and research outcomes and implementation. Most recently, policy makers, funders and (clinical) research institutions are making PPIE a strategic requirement for health research urging researchers to invite patients and relatives into their research activities.Our study is based in a Danish university hospital where PPIE has been introduced as one of five strategic research goals. We investigated how researchers experienced this new practice and how their research practices connect to the wider context of the Danish health care system. Ten cases were studied during a year using observations, interviews, and document analysis. As our method of inquiry, we used institutional ethnography to look at researchers’ work from their perspective and to understand how PPIE practices are part of a larger institutional research culture reaching far beyond the individual. We found that current research culture has implications for the selection of patients and relatives and for what they are asked to do. Researchers who experienced that PPIE outcomes aided their existing research practices felt motivated. Researchers who engaged patients and relatives before it was a strategy, were ideologically driven and their approaches resulted in an increased diversity of inclusion and researcher assimilation.These findings add to the current knowledge on PPIE practices and help us understand that further development towards collaborative research practices require a change in key performance indicators and training and perhaps call for attention to our shared acceptance of knowledge generation in research.

Investigating Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity: How Meta-Ethnography Contributes to the Study of Collaborative Research Practices

Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are collaborative research modes that help advance science dealing with grand societal challenges. However, many factors still act as obstacles to high-impact research, showing disconnections between practices and policies. We can reasonably question whether we are still incapable of applying the correct methods to grasp interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary heterogeneity. This article aims to deepen the discussion of the methodological options for critically studying interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. By applying meta-ethnography to the inter- and transdisciplinary academic literature, the paper inquires about the suitability of the method to study bodies of knowledge on interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Meta-ethnography is a seven-phase literature review type of meta-synthesis aimed at creating new understandings and theories from a body of work. Applying an autoethnographic approach, I show how meta-ethnography allows for the reconceptualisation of a disparate and dispersed body of literature, advancing current discussions on inter- and transdisciplinarity and their roles in science and policy. The approach outlined in the article is innovative because it contributes to two related realms: (i) it helps advance the field of inter- and transdisciplinary research and policy because it refines the methods available to study these multidimensional practices, and (ii) it offers an example of the further adaptability of meta-ethnography to new topics, such as the investigation of collaborative settings. I analyse six challenges in light of the scientific literature and conclude by focusing on the value meta-ethnography has for studying interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and propose two methodological innovations.

Role of Research Data Repositories and Open Data Sharing with Specific Reference to Open Science Framework (OSF)

In the world of research and academia, in the current era of data-driven research, the availability and accessibility of research data have become crucial for scientific research, collaboration and advancement. Consequently, sharing of data is becoming a more crucial aspect of fostering open science and reproducible research. The practice of research data sharing not only enables transparency in research and collaboration but also allows other researchers to build upon existing work to reproduce research, accelerating the pace of scientific discovery. Various research data repositories have emerged to facilitate this process, providing a platform for researchers to deposit and access research data. And, research data repositories, specifically generalist research data repositories, have become vital platforms facilitating the storage, management, and sharing of research data across various disciplines. One such prominent research data repository is the Open Science Framework (OSF), which has gained prominence as a powerful and versatile platform for its comprehensive set of features and commitment to open science and collaborative research practices. This article examines the concept of research data repositories and their features and functions. Further, it sheds light on the NIH’s GREI initiative and the role of Generalist Research Data Repositories (GRDR) and explores the Open Science Framework (OSF) with its key features and advantages with an emphasis on reproducible research and data sharing.

Patient and relative partnerships at the Center for Research with Patients and Relatives at Odense University Hospital: building a research unit for and with patients and relatives

Globally, the focus on user involvement in health research has increased substantially. In Denmark, it is still at an early stage with individual researchers being met with increasing demands without having much experience, guidance, or good practices to act upon. We are a group of researchers affiliated with User Perspectives and Community-based Interventions at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and the Center for Research with Patients and Relatives (ForSa-P) at the Odense University Hospital (OUH). We work with patients and relatives in several aspects of our work – research and teaching; we share our experiences and learning in a joint session. 
 Research for and with patients and relatives, or actively involving patients and relatives in all parts of the research process; it is the first of five goals in the 2021-2025 research strategy of OUH and SDU. The strategic document states that: good research will be based on existing knowledge and be strengthened by the patients’ own experiences of their illnesses and life situations.
 The first action was to establish a center for patients, relatives and researchers to support a culture shift towards patient-oriented collaborative health research and generate knowledge on collaborative health research practices. 
 The research center ForSa-P opened in January 2022 and embodies co-productive values: 1) patients and relatives have an integral role in the center, with the Center being headed by an academic and patient lead; and 2) all types of knowledge are valued, used and produced. We consider ‘involvement’ a way of being, not a research method. The Center supports researchers and patients to develop a fruitful and sustainable collaboration and we build a research programme focused on understanding the dynamics of these partnerships and their effect on the research produced and the people involved. 
 Using a speed-date method, all 44 hospital departments reflected on their collaborations with patients and relatives, and how they plan to work towards ‘more active involvement of patients and relatives in all steps of the research process by 2025’. This yielded an in-depth overview of collaborative practices across different departments and different types of research, good practices as well as concerns and limitations. We gained a better understanding of researchers’ and patients’ questions in relation to collaborative health research, which were translated in researchable questions on patient involvement (what is a ‘good patient’ according to a researcher seeking a patient-partner, what is a professional patient and do they contribute differently?).
 The research center developed a code of conduct to guide patients and researchers in building partnerships. The center’s staff visited several departments to discuss the topic of patient involvement and introduce the code of conduct. In November, patients, relatives and researchers of the research center presented their work at the hospital’s annual research week; for the first time, the event was open (and free) to patients and relatives to attend. 
 In this presentation we reflect on our mission and vision and our achievements one year after the launch of the research center, and two years in the strategic plan 2021-2025.

Research based youth care?!: An equal partnership between youth, their network, professionals, and researchers in youth care.

In the interdisciplinary research program VOICe (Voicing youth at social risk) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, we focus on developing collaborative research practices with young people ‘at social risk’. We share the mission to enable young people and professionals to enter a dialogue in an equal and investigative manner about what they really find important in their daily life context and to adjust this together if necessary. For the past ten years we have been developing collaborative research practices in education in collaboration with schools under the name ‘Research based School?!' to enhance the learning and well-being of students. We would like to further explore, adapt, and possibly roll out this experience with a collaborative model in the context of youth care. This project is based on the idea that quality of care stands or falls with the expertise and commitment of the facility. 
 “Research based youth care?!” sees a facility as an environment in which everyone bears a responsibility in each other's development. The focus is on the provision that dares to come forward as a learning community. This learning community enhances the growth of all involved by challenging them to tackle questions in partnership.
 This project embraces a collaboration model in which care providers, researchers, young people, and their network adopt an investigative attitude together. The use of problem-solving strategies and the exchange of knowledge through participation in a learning community with structured research activities are paramount in this project. It is important that the youth, their network, and the professionals realizes that a problem he/she is confronted with in the facility also affects others (colleagues, management, parents, other youth…). By including these different perspectives, the problem is supported within the entire social context and the chance of carrying out improvement actions is greater.
 In a first step, we will build a basis for the collaborative model within youth care, in which we will bring involved parties together to discuss the conditions for equal participation between young people, their network, professionals, and researchers. We have started experience experts and managers sharing their experiences in a professional learning community and to enter a dialogue to design a workable model to further involve other professionals and youth in subsequent phases.
 With this trajectory, the university and the professional field join forces with the aim of professionalizing themselves and promoting the development of young people, starting from their own practice; relevant for the facility, the care provider, the youth, and their network; as a full partner; and in dialogue between practice and theory.

Mapping the knowledge structure and trends in Australian Indigenous health and wellbeing research from 2003 to 2022: a scientometric analysis

The health and wellbeing of Australian Indigenous peoples is a nationally sanctioned priority, but despite this, few studies have comprehensively analyzed the features and characteristics of the research in the field. In this regard, a comprehensive scientometric analysis and knowledge mapping to systematically summarize and discuss the current state of research, research trends, and emerging areas of research were conducted. Original articles and reviews published between 2003 and 2022 were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection. CiteSpace and VOSviewer software were used to perform scientometric analysis and knowledge mapping. An examination of document and citation trends, authors, institutions, countries/regions, journals, and keywords was untaken, while co-citation, co-occurrence, and burst analysis provide insights and future development in this area. A total of 2,468 documents in this field were retrieved. A gradual increase in the number of documents over the past two decades is observed, with the number of documents doubling every ~7.5 years. Author Thompson SC and Charles Darwin University published the most documents, and 85.6% were affiliated with only Australian-based researchers. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health is the most prominent journal publishing in the field. The most commonly co-occurring keyword was “health,” and the keyword “risk” had the longest citation burst. Five keyword clusters were identified; “cultural safety” was the largest. This study articulates the knowledge structure of the research, revealing a shift from population-level and data-driven studies to more applied research that informs Indigenous peoples health and wellbeing. Based on this review, we anticipate emergent research areas to (1) reflect a more comprehensive understanding of the multidimensional factors that shape Indigenous health and wellbeing; (2) move beyond a deficit-based perspective; (3) respect cultural protocols and protect the rights and privacy of Indigenous participants; (4) address racism and discrimination within the healthcare system; (5) foster respectful, equitable, and collaborative research practices with Indigenous peoples; (6) provide culturally appropriate and effective interventions for prevention, early intervention, and treatment; and (7) ensure equitable change in systems to enhance access, quality, and outcomes in health and wellbeing.

StigmaBeat: Collaborating With Rural Young People to Co-Design Films Aimed at Reducing Mental Health Stigma.

Little is known about the experience and impact of intersectional stigma experienced by rural young people (15-25years) who have a parent with mental health challenges. The StigmaBeat project employed a co-design approach to create short films to identify and challenge mental health stigma from the perspective of young people who have experienced this phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to describe the co-design methodological approach used in StigmaBeat, as an example of a novel participatory project. We describe one way that co-design can be employed by researchers in collaboration with marginalised young people to produce films aimed at reducing mental health stigma in the community. Through describing the processes undertaken in this project, the opportunities, challenges, and tensions of combining community development methods with research methods will be explored. Co-design with young people is a dynamic and engaging method of collaborative research practice capable of harnessing lived experience expertise to intervene in social issues and redesign or redevelop health services and policies. The participatory approach involved trusting and implementing the suggestions of young people in designing and developing the films and involved creating the physical and social environment to enable this, including embedding creativity, a critical element to the project's methodological success. Intensive time and resource investment are needed to engage a population that is often marginalised in relation to stigma discourse.

The Big Lie: discursive risk analysis and wildland firefighter safety in the Western United States

While increased length and intensity of wildfire seasons in many places have led to more concern about wildland firefighter safety, we believe ethnography has been underutilized as a method within this domain. In response, we begin building a shared idiom for ethnographic engagement with wildland firefighter safety and similar occupations. We draw on ethnographic approaches to late industrialism to develop a method called discursive risk analysis (DRA) as an initial stage in a broader collaborative and generative research practice. By collaborative, we mean cooperation among stakeholder, disciplinary, professional, and other groups. We use DRA to analyse ethnographic data and documentary sources relevant to discussions of ‘the Big Lie’ among firefighters and agency leadership. The Big Lie is a term that both firefighters and agency leaders used to suggest that wildland firefighters are being harmed by agency discourse that says firefighters will be kept safe despite the unavoidable danger of the job. It is important to the Big Lie discussion that this harm is conceptualized by firefighters as discursively driven, necessitating a research method attentive to discourse. Discursive Risk Analysis of the Big Lie discussion suggests two discursive gaps that may result in two discursive risks. The first gap, found in agency discourse, is that ‘everyone knows the job is dangerous’ but ‘zero fatalities is a reasonable goal.’ This gap is associated with a discursive risk, a possible decrease in trust among wildland firefighters in agency leadership. The second gap, observed in firefighter discourse, is that ‘the job is dangerous’ but ‘no one will get hurt today.’ This gap is associated with another discursive risk, the possibility of decreased situational awareness. Finally, we clarify each of these gaps and risks through two anthropological concepts (the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis and the public secret) that can bring new perspectives to discussions about institutional cultures of health and safety.

Beading Librarianship

Beading Librarianship weaves together the stories of Indigenous librarians through conversational method interviews and shares those stories online. The Beading Librarianship website serves as a place of connection for Indigenous librarians who have come before and those who will come after. Indigenous peoples are underrepresented in librarianship, with percentages often described as "too small to count."
 In addition to serving as an oral history project designed to increase the number of Indigenous librarians, this project also seeks to model collaborative research practices. Research and educational institutions have a long history of harm toward Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous Research Methods that incorporate Indigenous Ways of Knowing need to be the standard when working with Indigenous Peoples to prevent continued extraction and harm. This includes reciprocity, relationship-based research, and Indigenous Knowledge Organization.
 To model collaborative research practices, each Beading Librarianship interview participant has full control over the webpage where their interview lives. They can choose to remove their interview at any point for any reason. Participants are included in every step of the process, including editing their interview and transcripts. In addition to receiving monetary compensation, each participant receives a hand-beaded QR code made by the PI that links to their respective interview, a physical reminder of kinship, connectedness, and mindfulness.
 Drawing on Diné scholar Amanda Tachine’s (2018) weaving framework, this project implements a beading framework for interviews with Indigenous librarians that allows for reflexivity, responsibility, epistemic sovereignty, technological mindfulness, and reciprocity.

Introduction of Integrated STEM Education to Pre-service Teachers Through Collaborative Action Research Practices

Introduction of Integrated STEM Education to Pre-service Teachers Through Collaborative Action Research Practices

Hanya ada Satu Kata: Lawan! On decolonising and building a mutual collaborative research practice on gender and climate change

ABSTRACT Our title is borrowed from a famous line of Wiji Thukul’s poem Peringatan (translated as Warning), about the everyday lives of the working class and their struggles to be heard, resonating with many of our experiences in working to decolonise climate knowledge production. As in Thukul’s words: ‘There is only one word: Fight!’ We critically reflect on our recent experiences working with artists, communities, activists, and practitioners to better understand the gender–age–urban interface of climate change: how climate impacts are shaped by gender and age in urban Indonesia. In a deliberate challenge to problematic conventions of academic publishing, we choose to frame this paper around a series of creative processes focused on women’s experiences and responses to climate change, including Madihin – a Banjarese tradition of musical storytelling – and Trans Superhero Perubahan Iklim (Transgender Superheroes for Climate). We centre these different forms of knowledge and voice in our discussion as a series of provocations for researchers and practitioners to think creatively about the languages we use, the methods we draw on, the collaborations we build, how we disseminate ‘academic’ knowledge, and to push at institutional barriers and the boundaries of what ‘inclusion’ truly means at each stage of our research processes. We explore how feminist, ethnographic, and arts-led methodologies can foreground knowledge, perspectives, and art forms that are traditionally excluded in climate change knowledge production – long dominated by colonial and patriarchal hegemonies (and tyrannies) of science and ‘experts’; and unpack our un/learning in this imperfect ‘fight’ to decolonise our research process and build a mutual collaborative research practice.

Intermediality in Academia: Creative Research through Film

This article provides an overview of the recent flourishing of research and pedagogy in higher education that seeks a greater rapprochement between criticism and creativity, bringing together diverse media, disciplines, and modes of knowledge production and expression. It focuses on transformations in film and screen studies and on the ethical and aesthetic possibilities of conducting creative, intermedial research through filmmaking, drawing on the author’s recent, first-hand experiences of conducting such research through her making of two films about the African women filmmakers Judy Kibinge (from Kenya) and Bongiwe Selane (from South Africa). The author gives specific examples from her filmmaking process to show how she has attempted to unsettle the generic space between documentary filmmaking, curatorial practice, and video-essay making to engage in a collaborative research practice with Kibinge, Selane, and their communities, as well as her research teams. Grounding itself in a decolonial feminist framework, this article draws on the perspectives of a wide range of thinkers and filmmaker scholars to explore ways in which the colonial, patriarchal values that have haunted many academic institutions can be reformed to allow for the envisioning of new futures that will lead to a more self-reflexive, socially just higher education environment.

Collaborative practice research in a community-based home visiting program

ABSTRACT Through collaborative practice research with the goal of identifying alternative discourses that can challenge expert-led knowledge in parent education, this study examined a community-based home visiting programme conducted by a social work practitioner serving disadvantaged migrant families in Shenzhen. To obtain diverse information, data was collected by three major methods, including in-depth interviews, participant observations and document reviews. Findings of this study shed lights on the social work research-practice partnership through a reflexive knowledge co-construction approach which helped to produce alternative discourses that considered parents’ experiential knowledge and emphasised a system-oriented perspective. By embracing the alternative subjectivities constituted by alternative discourses as collaborators and co-learners, the practitioner and researcher also demonstrated abilities to think about new possibilities for parent education practice and research. Implications for future empowerment-oriented social work practice and research in family and parent education fields were also discussed.

“Research Is Not Innocent”: A Review of Thalia Mulvihill and Raji Swaminathan’s Collaborative Qualitative Research

Mulvihill and Swaminathan have written a wide-ranging book that takes a close look at how qualitative research can be collaborative and what implications come from how collaborative practices are taken up. While taking an appreciative stance toward collaborative research practices, they do not shy away from the challenges and unrealized potentials that are involved. This book serves as both an introduction to the basics of collaborative qualitative research and an in-depth look at the issues for the more experienced collaborative researcher.

Collaborative practice research in social work: piloting a model for research and professional learning during COVID-19

Given the quintessentially collaborative nature of social work practice research, many researchers have explored the utility of participatory action research for promoting collaborative learning and knowledge production in social work. As a response to this call for participatory practice research methodology, we developed and piloted ‘collaborative practice research in social work’ in the project, ‘Empowering Social Workers in Challenging Times: Learning from Best Practice during COVID-19’. ‘Collaborative practice research in social work’ is a networked approach to social work participatory practice research, designed to integrate practice wisdom and research evidence to produce useful knowledge for social workers to practise ethically and effectively during COVID-19. This article will present some findings from the evaluation of ‘collaborative practice research in social work’, showing how the reversed sequence of involvement (practitioner researchers first and then academics) in research can enable practitioner-led learning, democratise knowledge production and help validate different types of knowledge in social work practice research. ‘Collaborative practice research in social work’ has demonstrated the need to address alienating academic practices that are not sensitive to the needs of practice or see practice as an afterthought. Findings further suggest the need to better prepare academic researchers to engage with participatory practice research, which can be an emotionally unsettling and unfamiliar research environment.

Influence of Collaboration on the Quality of Research Outcome Among Mass Communication Students in South-South Nigeria

The study explored the influence of Mass Communication collaboration on research outcomes in selected universities in the South-South of Nigeria. The paper observed that the influence of research collaboration amongst Mass Communication scholars was high. The most influential factors to collaborative research practice were enhanced team approach in research and the generation of new insights or perceptions that individuals working on their own may not have been able to achieve. The issue of internet connectivity, difficulty in working with colleagues in research as many of them may not be able to contribute anything, and being afraid of inadequate contribution by co-authors were the most established drawbacks discovered in this study. The study recommended that there should be research collaboration that is anchored on the necessary atmosphere that will make the exercise worthwhile by institutions of learning.

Community-Driven Conversations: Partnership Building through CHEC-Ins.

Chicago's systemically underserved communities have disproportionately high cancer rates. The Chicago Cancer Health Equity Collaborative (ChicagoCHEC) brings together academic and community partners to address these health inequities. The community conversations known as "CHEC-Ins" provide a space for community members to voice their experiences and needs and for ChicagoCHEC to fulfill its commitment to advancing health equity through collaboration and action. This paper presents a community-generated approach to social networking about cancer health issues known as CHEC-Ins. Through this innovative approach, community members and organizations share cancer related information and experiences, as well as needs and concerns, which are then channeled to ChicagoCHEC academic and administrative members who incorporate them into outreach and research activities. In this way, community members set the agenda and the process and collect the information they deem relevant and important. This paper describes the process of organizing and conducting two pilot CHEC-Ins and the model of this approach, which we intend to employ moving forward to advance partnership building and collaborative research practice between academic institutions and community partners and organizations. This paper contributes a unique model of community-generated and led outreach as a cornerstone of the ChicagoCHEC approach to community engagement. The leaders of the ChicagoCHEC Community Steering Committee spearheaded the design and implementation of CHEC-Ins, including developing the question guide and hosting events within their organizations. CHEC-Ins proved to be a valuable strategy for defining the role of community partners and establishing the basis for a bi-directional flow of information, resources, and productive action. The two pilot CHEC-Ins revealed important insights related to sources of cancer information, meanings and associated attitudes, barriers to access and use of health services, and social support systems in the communities where ChicagoCHEC works. We will implement this approach and continue to refine it as we conduct CHECIns moving forward.

Different readings and evoked conversations

In this dialogic piece we insist on the value of keeping alive critical debates about how academic knowledge is produced, when it comes to understanding the complexities involved in laying bare the impact of socioeconomic and sociocultural differences crossing borders and contexts. The climate for conversations about difference is constructed and moved by sentiments like rage, shame, guilt, and resentment but also connectedness and shared excitement. Human conversations across difference involve risk-taking but also engagement, evocation and inspiration. Here we make a humble intent to do so, taking as a point of departure our participation in a symposium held to launch Christina Hee Pedersen’s book Collaborative Research Methodologies (2021). We use collaborative writing as a method of inquiry to explore how our understandings of concepts like intersectionality, social in- and exclusion, social justice and different knowledge forms represent a challenge to academic subjects within a pronounced audit culture, fi lled with competition and unequal employment conditions. We argue that explorative conversations are pivotal to cultivate feminist, anti-racist and decolonial pockets of critical, collaborative research and teaching practices.