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Research as usual in humanitarian settings? Equalising power in academic-NGO research partnerships through co-production

BACKGROUND: Research partnerships in conflict-affected and humanitarian settings can reveal complex power hierarchies between academics and NGOs. During the process of research, decision-making may skew in favour of more powerful actors, who often direct the scope of the research, hold the budget an...

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Autores principales: Lokot, Michelle, Wake, Caitlin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8390113/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34446059
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13031-021-00399-w
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author Lokot, Michelle
Wake, Caitlin
author_facet Lokot, Michelle
Wake, Caitlin
author_sort Lokot, Michelle
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Research partnerships in conflict-affected and humanitarian settings can reveal complex power hierarchies between academics and NGOs. During the process of research, decision-making may skew in favour of more powerful actors, who often direct the scope of the research, hold the budget and lead the analysis. Co-production is increasingly emerging as a helpful approach that attempts to equalise power dynamics during research. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the main challenges associated with a “research as usual” approach to research partnerships in humanitarian settings, as power hierarchies may be particularly magnified in these settings. METHODS: This paper is based on a comprehensive literature review and 32 semi-structured interviews with academics and practitioners from non-government organisations. Participants were selected purposively based on their experience in co-producing research or working within research partnerships. Some participants had worked in humanitarian settings while others had experience co-producing research in non-humanitarian contexts. We used Nvivo to thematically code data. RESULTS: This paper documents the problems with “research as usual” partnerships in humanitarian settings, specifically: the burden on communities as merely sources of data, certain forms of knowledge being valued over others, lack of reflection on the power hierarchies structuring research partnerships, top-down decision-making and lack of transparency, one-way “capacity-building”, lack of mutual benefit, and rigid research processes and timeframes. CONCLUSION: This paper highlights key challenges with standard research practices in humanitarian settings and identifies seven key principles of co-production that can be helpful in attempting to equalise power dynamics within research partnerships, specifically in conflict-affected and humanitarian settings. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13031-021-00399-w.
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spelling pubmed-83901132021-08-27 Research as usual in humanitarian settings? Equalising power in academic-NGO research partnerships through co-production Lokot, Michelle Wake, Caitlin Confl Health Research BACKGROUND: Research partnerships in conflict-affected and humanitarian settings can reveal complex power hierarchies between academics and NGOs. During the process of research, decision-making may skew in favour of more powerful actors, who often direct the scope of the research, hold the budget and lead the analysis. Co-production is increasingly emerging as a helpful approach that attempts to equalise power dynamics during research. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the main challenges associated with a “research as usual” approach to research partnerships in humanitarian settings, as power hierarchies may be particularly magnified in these settings. METHODS: This paper is based on a comprehensive literature review and 32 semi-structured interviews with academics and practitioners from non-government organisations. Participants were selected purposively based on their experience in co-producing research or working within research partnerships. Some participants had worked in humanitarian settings while others had experience co-producing research in non-humanitarian contexts. We used Nvivo to thematically code data. RESULTS: This paper documents the problems with “research as usual” partnerships in humanitarian settings, specifically: the burden on communities as merely sources of data, certain forms of knowledge being valued over others, lack of reflection on the power hierarchies structuring research partnerships, top-down decision-making and lack of transparency, one-way “capacity-building”, lack of mutual benefit, and rigid research processes and timeframes. CONCLUSION: This paper highlights key challenges with standard research practices in humanitarian settings and identifies seven key principles of co-production that can be helpful in attempting to equalise power dynamics within research partnerships, specifically in conflict-affected and humanitarian settings. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13031-021-00399-w. BioMed Central 2021-08-26 /pmc/articles/PMC8390113/ /pubmed/34446059 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13031-021-00399-w Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Lokot, Michelle
Wake, Caitlin
Research as usual in humanitarian settings? Equalising power in academic-NGO research partnerships through co-production
title Research as usual in humanitarian settings? Equalising power in academic-NGO research partnerships through co-production
title_full Research as usual in humanitarian settings? Equalising power in academic-NGO research partnerships through co-production
title_fullStr Research as usual in humanitarian settings? Equalising power in academic-NGO research partnerships through co-production
title_full_unstemmed Research as usual in humanitarian settings? Equalising power in academic-NGO research partnerships through co-production
title_short Research as usual in humanitarian settings? Equalising power in academic-NGO research partnerships through co-production
title_sort research as usual in humanitarian settings? equalising power in academic-ngo research partnerships through co-production
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8390113/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34446059
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13031-021-00399-w
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