From the shadows into the light: the growth of community engaged research practices

The ‘impact agenda’ of the last decade has thrust community engaged and participatory research practices into the spotlight as a potential pathway to research impact. Once considered a fairly niche research methodology, many funding bodies now require that researchers engage with ‘end-users’, ‘consumers’ and/or community. While this new emphasis has engendered a greater appreciation of community engaged research, the challenge is how to translate this requirement into rigorous and ethical practices. We argue that mainstreaming community engaged research practices requires a fundamental shift in knowledge creation paradigms and practices, not simply the addition of consumers and end-users into researcher-led inquiry.

Traditionally, hegemonic models of knowledge creation placed academic expertise at the apex of the knowledge production hierarchy, relegating practice and lived expertise to subalternate forms of knowledge. To challenge and resist this inequity and to neutralise power imbalances, Melbourne Social Equity Institute created the Community Fellows Program. In its tenth year, the program was established as an act of solidarity with community organisations and the communities they serve. The program seeks to build the capacity of community organisations to lead and undertaken their own research, supported by the resources of the University of Melbourne. Through democratising access to the academy, the program supports Community Fellows and university-based academics to come together as equals. The knowledge, practice and lived expertise of the Fellow is centred, supported and amplified through the acquisition of research skills. We believe that the program is one example of how universities could support more equitable and reciprocal knowledge coproduction processes.

Charlene Edwards is Manager and Community Fellows Program Director at the Melbourne Social Equity Institute, University of Melbourne. She facilitates interdisciplinary and community-engaged research across a broad range of social equity issues. She is the co-creator of the Community Fellows Program and is deeply committed to inclusive and emancipatory research practices. Charlene holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Music and Drama/Theatre Studies from Royal Holloway, University of London, a Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a Master of Public Health from the University of Melbourne.