In the second phase of the initiative, we held a series of place-based workshops with engaged researchers and engagement practitioners across the focus countries to gather regional insights and to begin to co-design guiding principles and a cohesive framework for the Centres for Exchange.
The development of the guiding principles – which emerged from the landscaping and insight synthesis1, the place-based workshops, and conversations with other key stakeholders – served as a first step in the concept development process and ensured that the work remained centred in a commitment to shared values. Following this, we coordinated a series of internal co-design workshops with our collaborative team and Wellcome colleagues to develop a vision, goals and a conceptual framework for the Centres for Exchange project. These were sense checked and refined through engagement with key stakeholders and through participatory workshops at Wellcome.
Defining our terms
Given the potential limitations of the concept of community engagement and the transformational aspirations of this project, we have chosen to focus instead on the complex, socially embedded, fluid processes involved in the production and exchange of knowledge. This shift also brings focus to the key point that knowledge is not simply gathered and transferred from one place or person to another in a directional flow. Rather, knowledge is produced, translated, and transformed through a series of context-specific encounters between diverse people, mediated through (often unequal) relationships between these knowledge actors, and framed by particular epistemological orientations and assumptions. To describe this complex process, we use the shorthand phrasing knowledge exchange. And to describe the diverse actors involved in this process, we use the term knowledge communities.
The reciprocal processes through which forms of knowledge move between spaces, and across geographic & socioeconomic divides, to have particular impacts in the world.
The diverse stakeholders (researchers, participants, practitioners, and power brokers) involved in producing and exchanging knowledge.
Guiding principles for the Centres for Exchange
Focus on dismantling practices that reproduce sexism, racism, and other forms of inequality and social exclusion in health research and knowledge exchange – and implementing transformative and emancipatory practices.
Identify and prioritise the inclusion of marginalised voices, developing principles and practices that take into account diverse languages, abilities, and contexts to foster equitable, inclusive dialogue.
Work to support existing relationships of trust between the diverse local stakeholders that make up knowledge communities and seek to build new relationships based on shared understanding and mutual benefit.
Recognise and allow for the emergence and cohabitation of diverse forms of knowledge and worldviews through transdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to knowledge exchange.
Catalyse processes of collaboration and co-ownership among diverse research stakeholders at each stage of knowledge production and exchange to ensure that research speaks to the issues that matter most in different local contexts.
Connect partners across research, service delivery, community action, and policy to ensure responsiveness to communities’ immediate needs and to facilitate the effective translation of knowledge to inform longer-term social change.
Develop approaches to knowledge exchange that centre contextual and lived experience forms of knowledge, while also ensuring wider reach, impact, and influence.
Invest in lasting relationships with diverse stakeholders and power brokers, built on a shared sense of commitment and accountability to knowledge communities in their diversity.
Take a flexible and iterative approach to research and learning, investing in adaptive learning strategies, documenting their processes over time, and sharing learning across centres.
Centres for Exchange are committed to reducing health inequities and promoting collective health through the advancement of equitable and inclusive knowledge communities and the open exchange of diverse forms of knowledge.
To centre the perspectives, priorities, and capabilities of the people and communities most affected by health challenges in the production of knowledge about health
To foster collaborative, inclusive, and intersectional knowledge communities, built through long-term relationships of care, located in key geographies in the Global South
To support, learn from, and build connections between transformative models of practice in health research
Proposed architecture
The Centres for Exchange are a network of place and practice-based initiatives that aim to foster innovation in equitable and inclusive health research and knowledge exchange. As part of a broader commitment to power-shifting, these collectives are led from and geographically located in the Global South -- and have a decentralised governance structure. Across their practices, they work to realise principles of equity, inclusion and care, as well as sensitivity to context, in health research through their daily operations and approach to knowledge production and exchange. The collectives serve to foster health research projects and products that emerge from, resonate with, and create meaningful impact for the communities they serve – focusing in particular on those who have been unreached or actively excluded from research – thereby producing more impactful health research.
The Centres for Exchange are composed of:
Key stakeholders
Knowledge collectives
We envision that each knowledge collective could emerge from existing models of practice led by one or more existing civil society or grassroot organisations based in the focus geography or be constituted of a newly formed consortium or partnership. In the initial pilot phase, the most likely organisations to take on this coordination role would be established civil society organisations with genuine local leadership and a strong track record. These organisations would need to be nimble and responsive, while also having a formal structure of governance able to administer funds and deliver on activities. It would also be important to ensure strong collaborations with formal research institutions, government institutions, and universities.
In the longer-term vision of a core-funded network of knowledge collectives, we envision that the knowledge collectives would likely be newly formed consortia in which diverse partners could effectively share leadership roles. The leading organisation(s) would be responsible for convening other local consortia and partners, delivering activities, and ensuring accountability to the learning network partners and funders.
Learning network
Similar to the knowledge collectives, we envision that the learning network would be convened by at least one organisation from the Global South, who would serve as the cross-project knowledge partner to help to coordinate knowledge exchange and support and amplify the work of the knowledge collectives. In the longer term we envision that the learning network would be collaboratively governed by representatives from each place-based knowledge collective.
1. As part of this process, we engaged with existing sets of principles, including the UNICEF Minimum Standards for Engagement, the NIHR Draft Principles for Community Engagement, the WHO Community Engagement Guidelines and the Rethinking Research Collaborative Principles, amongst others.