Latest contribution
Researcher motivations affect equitable collaboration with local and indigenous peoples
By Roxana Roos.
What motivates researchers in choosing to work with local and indigenous communities? How do these motivations shape how much say local and indigenous people actually get in the research that affects them? What do researchers need to do to ensure that collaboration is equitable?
Here, I describe two clusters of motivations.
The first cluster revolves around verbs such as “understand,” “collect,” “study,” and “know.” Researchers in this group are largely driven by personal interest, curiosity, and a professional identity (“I am an anthropologist. It is my job to find out how people live”). Here, the researcher is the active party: they interview, observe, analyze, and publish. The local and indigenous people, on the other hand, play a more passive role; their practices and narratives are studied rather than being part of a partnership.
The second cluster revolves around verbs such as “exchange,” “develop,” and “collaborate.” Researchers in this cluster present the need for research as something that can only be met through collaboration, where local and indigenous communities contribute initiative, ideas, and relevant knowledge to define and solve a shared, complex problem.
Recent contributions
The multidimensional process of co-creation: Five consistent dimensions
By Katrina Messiha.
How can we avoid co-creation being used as a general term for any form of stakeholder engagement? Are there key dimensions that co-creation processes should aim to consider?
Based on analysis across 9 research fields, several types of co-creation and explicit theories, colleagues and I (Messiha et al., 2025) argue that co-creation is a multidimensional process, with five dimensions:
- Multi-stakeholder collaborative action;
- Process of co-learning towards innovation;
- Contextual knowledge production;
- Generating meaning; and
- Open, trustful and inclusive dialogue.
These dimensions offer a conceptual tool for planning, examining and strengthening co-creation research.
Fulfillment, balance and process: Co-active coaching principles for team science
By Joanna Kaniewska and Gemma Jiang.
2. Gemma Jiang (biography)
What is Co-Active Coaching and how can it be applied in teams?
Co-Active Coaching (Kimsey-House et al., 2018) is a coaching method built on the premise that people are naturally creative, resourceful, and capable of finding their own answers. Rather than acting as an expert or trainer who gives solutions, the coach partners with coachees in a collaborative process that helps them gain clarity, make intentional choices, and create meaningful change.
In this i2Insights contribution, we focus on the three core principles of Co-Active Coaching—fulfillment, balance, and process—and show how they can be used in teamwork.
Fulfillment: reconnecting people to their purpose
Fulfillment coaching is about connecting work to meaning. It can be particularly useful when team members are disengaged, anxious, or questioning the value of their work.
How could research ethics governance better support participatory, transdisciplinary, and transformation-oriented research?
By Ying-Syuan (Elaine) Huang and Julia Wittmayer.
2. Julia Wittmayer (biography)
How can we design an ethics governance system that can better respond when ethical dilemmas emerge after institutional approval has been granted?
This question is increasingly pressing for researchers engaged in participatory, transdisciplinary, and transformative work. Ethical concerns often arise in-situ where partnerships evolve, power dynamics shift, community expectations change, and research begins to have effects beyond the original project design.
These concerns do not fit neatly into conventional ethics review procedures at universities, which still tend to be organised around upfront review: researchers submit an application, a committee assesses it, and approval is granted before the research begins. This model matters for safeguarding participants, researchers, and institutions.
Leading with Lived Experience across the research life cycle
By Catherine Brasier, Dan Chamberlain and Sarah Wilson.
2. Dan Chamberlain (biography)
3. Sarah Wilson (biography)
How can researchers and people with Lived Experience expertise effectively and authentically work together in Lived-Experience-centred research?
Along with colleagues, we have developed a structured approach, namely the “Wellways Six Steps of the Research Life Cycle,” which is shown in the figure below and described, along with 16 key actions. The aim is to help researchers and people with Lived Experience expertise to “work it out together.”
People with Lived Experience expertise demonstrate deep understanding of the following elements to drive their input:
- their own personal experience of the issue at hand
- their understanding of other people’s Lived Experiences
- Lived Experience values and practices
- the history of the Lived Experience movement – including the impact of the systemic and social factors.
Highlighted contributions
Decolonising your writing
By kate harriden
As an Indigenous person, it is draining, infuriating and tedious to consistently encounter recently written academic material that invokes, seemingly uncritically, colonial tropes. Paired with these tropes is usually a mix of arrogance, condescension and ignorance on which notions of ‘western’ superiority are based. I am Totally. Over. It. Not only are these tropes inaccurate and offensive, they allow the colonized researcher to avoid critiquing the impacts of colonization and (un)conscious biases in their work.
If you don’t understand ‘the problem’, chances are you are part of it, so sit down and open your mind as we go through this together. Hopefully the tips provided on how to decolonize your academic writing will start your journey into decolonizing writing.
Learning to recognize colonial writing
Undoubtedly you have read substantially more academic material imbued with colonial values and assumptions than decolonial academic material.
Lessons for strengthening community-university partnerships
By David D. Hart, Bridie McGreavy, Anthony Sutton, Gabrielle V. Hillyer and Darren J. Ranco
In an increasingly polarized world, how can partnerships between communities and universities strengthen the kinds of deliberative and democratic practices that might help address many local and global challenges? How can such partnerships improve practices that involve listening and responding across differences (the deliberative part)? How can they help find ways to make shared decisions and take joint actions, knowing that complete agreement or mutual understanding may never be possible (the democratic part)?
Institutionalizing evidence-informed policy-making in Latin America and the Caribbean / Institucionalizando la toma de decisiones informadas por evidencias en Latinoamérica y el Caribe/ Institucionalizando a formulação de políticas informadas em evidências na América Latina e Caribe
By Directors and Coordinators of the Latin American and the Caribbean Evidence Hub
A Spanish version and a Portuguese version of this post are available
How is the routine use of evidence in policy in Latin America and the Caribbean progressing? How is it being institutionalized?
We provide a brief history of key initiatives to institutionalize evidence-informed policy making mechanisms in the region.
Decolonising research capacity development
By Maru Mormina and Romina Istratii
2. Romina Istratii (biography)
Why do many countries in the Global South remain behind when it comes to knowledge production and use, despite decades-long efforts to strengthen research capacity?
We think this is because the North still looks at the South with a ‘deficit mentality,’ according to which the latter has the problems and the former the solutions. From this standpoint, northern-led capacity development initiatives fail to recognise the South’s rich and diverse knowledge traditions and systems. Instead, they continue to impose monolithic blueprints of knowledge production, therefore re-inscribing colonial patterns of intellectual Western hegemony.
Of course, in many countries, research systems need support but current approaches are at best producing mixed results. A decolonial lens can help us identify alternative models.
Decolonising research capacity development in principle