“Challenges in Partnered Research” is a new Q&A series by Partnering in Research that highlights individuals transforming policies, practices, and communities through collaborative research. Each installment features 1-3 researchers from diverse disciplines discussing some of the most common challenges faced in partnered research and their innovative solutions.
In the realm of engaged research, sustainability remains a critical challenge. From financial sustainability to navigating ethical considerations and maintaining strong, reciprocal partnerships, how can these collaborations balance the desire to serve the community with the need to fund and sustain ongoing research activities?
In today’s episode, we delve into the complexities of achieving sustainability in engaged research. We had the pleasure of speaking with two distinguished guests who have dedicated their careers to fostering impactful community partnerships.
In this conversation, we explore the strategies these leaders employ to navigate the financial challenges of engaged research, as well as other critical obstacles such as ethical considerations, maintaining trust and reciprocity in partnerships, and ensuring the relevance and impact of their work. Hear experienced insights on overcoming these barriers, the importance of community involvement, the difference between reciprocity and transaction, and their vision for the future of community-based research. Whether you’re a researcher, community partner, or simply interested in the intersection of academia and community engagement, this episode offers valuable perspectives on sustaining the important work of engaged research.
Meet the Speakers!
Our first guest is Dr. Henry Yu, a Professor in the UBC Department of History and Co-Director of the UBC Centre for Asian Canadian Research and Engagement. Dr. Yu’s work is deeply intertwined with local community organizations, civic institutions such as museums, and various levels of government. He is one of the Founding Directors of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC, the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation, and the Chinese Canadian Museum of BC. Dr. Yu is currently Co-Director with Dr. J.P Catungal of the UBC Centre for Asian Canadian Research and Engagement, which aims to build a more socially just future for Asian Canadian communities and beyond through meaningful community-based research.
Joining us as well is Dr. Vicky Bungay, a Professor in the UBC School of Nursing and Director of UBC’s Capacity: The Centre for Research in Community Engagement and Gender Equity. Dr. Bungay’s research focuses on addressing inequities that negatively impact health and well-being, including the detrimental effects of stigma, discrimination, and violence. Her work explores how research partnerships can create positive change for communities excluded from health and social policy, and how community-based interventions can support real-world evidence.
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Edits have been made to this written Q&A for clarity, style, and tone.
What does it mean to be sustainable in engaged research?
Henry Yu: Sustainability can mean anything. But I take it just from my experience of having done this for 20 years here in Vancouver at UBC, as well as a decade before that in Los Angeles when I used to work at UCLA. Sustainability is about people and sustained relationships. So, we try to minimize the kinds of one-off projects that even seem very short-term.
We often try to build on existing relationships, build trust by doing things together, and meeting mutual goals. We spend the time to sit down with potential partners before we ever do anything or send a student. We have conversations to ensure we’re aligned on our goals. This doesn’t mean we have to have the same goals as our partners, but we need to understand each other’s goals.
We use activities, projects, Gantt charts, and timelines to measure whether we’re meeting our goals. Sustainability involves processes to check with stakeholders, share problems, and avoid trying to solve all problems by ourselves. By communicating effectively, we can understand if one of our partners is facing budget cuts or lacks capacity. This way, we can find ways to solve problems together over time in a sustained, ethical manner, where we trust each other to look out for our own interests.
To me, sustainability involves activities with community members, campus stakeholders, and different units working together. Without these elements, you risk not having a sustainable set of activities.
Vicky Bungay: Building off of that, it is all about relationships. Sustainability is about the relationships you have and develop. At the core of that is reciprocity. It’s not transactional—I give you this, you give me that—but truly understanding what each of us brings to the table.
What are our strengths? What challenges do we face individually and within the team? How do we put this all together, and how do we value what everyone brings? For me, sustainability is about mutual respect, recognizing the many ways to think about knowledge, problems, and issues. It’s about coming together to harness the value of what each person and group brings, whether they are academics, non-profits, or part of the public sector.
As we consider sustainability, we must ask ourselves: what are we doing that’s useful? That’s a big part of my thinking about what sustainability looks like. Value-added can mean many different things. As Henry said, it’s about understanding what each of us is in it for and how we are contributing to the challenges and problems we are trying to address. In my case, we’re looking at issues of violence, interpersonal violence, and discrimination. We need to think about these issues, share our different understandings of them, and find a shared path. Without that, it’s not sustainable.
Henry Yu: And just to kind of jump on to what Vicky was saying, I think one of the key elements of synergy comes from understanding that we can do certain things, and our partners can do certain things. It can’t be transactional. I can’t overemphasize how often I’ve heard someone say, “Oh yeah, this is really reciprocal.” And then when I listen to what they’re talking about, I say, “No, that’s transactional.”
Our partners bring a lot of practical expertise because they’re on the ground, doing the work. They often have many ideas they’ve been unable to implement because no one has been listening. They say, “I’ve been doing this for years, and if we could only do this, it would make our lives easier.”
Sustainability is funny because it’s not an end goal. The goals actually come from the process itself. Sustainability is just one of those things you must have, or you risk bad relationships where someone feels exploited, misled, or given false hope. Or when your funding runs out or something happens, you might leave them in the lurch. Sustainability means many things in this context.
Vicky Bungay: Building off of this notion of trust, there’s a lot of mistrust in research, particularly when partnering with various organizations and communities. Research can often be seen as extractive, where it’s just “science in, knowledge out.” Sustainability is part of overcoming those barriers that have been constructed. It’s not because anyone has malintentions; it’s just that science is a bit behind community leadership and engagement. So, part of the process is thinking about how to navigate and negotiate expectations, goals, and outcomes to ensure you’re fully engaged and committed. You need strategies to really grapple with the fact that you might be working with people who are mistrustful.
They want to work with you and want to trust, but there’s a history of extractive processes that have not bode well for them, exacerbating stigma and discrimination. It’s about being aware of their previous relationships with researchers and engaging in a way that rebuilds trust in a meaningful manner. It’s all part of this messiness of sustainability.
How have you achieved sustainability in your engaged research initiatives?
Henry Yu: When I’m asked how we’ve done what we’ve done, I emphasize that we’ve worked hard on learning and listening through our partnerships. These partnerships have become the center of our sustainable practices. Starting with a set of people you don’t know, and who don’t know you, there will naturally be mistrust. Vicky already addressed this; the history of universities in communities is not a good one. The mistrust is there for good reason. Universities have often been extractive, engaging in what we call hit-and-run research, where the researcher gets what they want and then disappears.
These hit-and-run experiences make it hard for those of us who genuinely want to have sustainable projects. Many of our ethics criteria aim to protect community partners. Indigenous communities, for instance, have forced universities to screen researchers who don’t understand what it means to work with them. From a university perspective, sustainability means that students and researchers should not be allowed to engage with off-campus communities until they understand the history and acknowledge that they may be part of the problem. Are they genuinely contributing to a solution, or are they perpetuating a history of extractive research?
Allowing projects that are not sustainable or ethical exacerbates reputational risks for the university. Each hit-and-run project that we greenlight might seem beneficial in the short term, bringing in substantial funding and even promotions, but it’s antithetical to the sustainability of research practices. These projects make it harder for those of us who are continually engaged in sustainable research, and they also hinder the next good idea or researcher trying to build trust with historically marginalized and vulnerable communities, like Indigenous communities.
Vicky Bungay: Yeah, thinking about achieving sustainability, I think it all comes back to building relationships, as we already said. But there’s also this piece about really shifting out of just what Henry said about the rescue or the researcher as the expert, or how we even conceptualize community and people. It’s about really attending to what the strengths are.
At the core of sustainability for me is recognizing those strengths. Communities often already know what solutions are needed, depending on how you define community. They don’t frame things as problems but as opportunities to continue building capacity and improving the quality of life for everyone within the community.
Listening and attending to these insights is probably one of the greatest strategies to unpack assumptions, biases, and even some of the science that has come before. It’s about focusing on the strengths that many communities, especially those who have experienced marginalization, already possess. These communities don’t frame themselves by demographic characteristics or problems; they see their lives as shared experiences. It’s about identifying who the wise ones are and listening to them.
In considering how to achieve this, it’s about approaching with curiosity, knowing your strengths, and understanding how you move through the world. Recognize how you might be part of the challenges communities face, and own that.
Students often come to me saying they want to do this work, and it’s great to see that enthusiasm. My first question is always, “Have you worked in that community? How have you come to this place?” Often, they’ll mention working with patients who have experienced certain things. But partnering with a community and asking me to facilitate entry isn’t that simple. Navigating how you introduce people is another crucial element of sustainability.
People, especially in the academic sector, often ask for introductions to communities. We want to support respectful engagement, as fostering this growth is important. But how you think about the team, who gets invited, and how they’re introduced is crucial. For example, when we’re asked if people can use our advisory committee, my response is always to provide a one-page summary. I’ll take it to the advisory and share it with them. It’s their decision, not mine, whether to invite someone to a meeting.
Once you’re engaged, there’s a lot of responsibility to contribute to the safety of that community and understand what that relationship means. Navigating and negotiating these aspects sensitively is essential for meaningful and respectful collaboration.
Henry Yu: It’s like with the access issue; I don’t know how many times I could fill a jar if I had a quarter for every time someone asks me, “Can you introduce me?” or “Can you give me this?” Often, these are access questions, like needing a letter of support for a grant or something similar. I’m always careful not to say outright that I’m protecting my relationships from them, but in my head, I know that if they screw up, I’ll be the one who has to fix my relationship with others. So, I have to be very careful about how to protect those relationships.
Sustainability is funny because it’s like a marriage. There are lots of bad marriages, with infinite varieties of what makes them bad. But a good, sustainable model involves high communication and multiple iterative processes. It’s about constantly checking where we are with partners and within our own team. There’s a sort of succession planning that constantly asks, “How do we bring new students in sustainably?” and “How do we ensure that the learnings of those moving on are passed on to the existing team?” It’s about not just listening, but listening, learning, applying, and if something doesn’t work, trying something else. There is this need for adaptability and evolution, which [Vicky] mentioned.
You can’t think you’ve got it all figured out with a Gantt chart and a timeline. Just because it’s your timing doesn’t mean it’s going to work for anyone else. There might need to be adjustments to the Gantt chart, and you may need staged processes where a phase might not finish on time. You might need to go back and rethink things. So, to me, it’s about a lot of staging, succession planning, and thinking about long-term viability and how to maintain it. It’s important not to overpromise and underdeliver. Instead, you need to be very careful with your commitments. They’re not just promises; they’re commitments you must meet. Never promise anything you aren’t committed to fulfilling.
Vicky Bungay: That piece about commitment is so important. You have to be clear on what you can and can’t accomplish. One of the challenges is that research moves slowly. Nothing happens fast in research, especially when compared to the fast pace of everyday life, whether it’s people providing services or other activities that require quick adaptation and flexibility to address emergent issues within their organizations and communities.
Understanding that research has its own timeframe is crucial. People are happy to work together and you’ve built a great relationship, but there’s also this need to understand what research really looks like and the different ways to conduct it. One of the things to focus on is building capacity. It’s about understanding what research entails, what’s required for funding, and what’s needed for peer review. Being transparent about these elements is key—not to overwhelm people or make them responsible for all these pieces, but to communicate effectively about them.
These elements are part of the institution or industry of research, and knowing how to navigate them is important. Being responsive to emergent changes is also essential. You need to design your research in a way that it can be adaptable and flexible. If it isn’t, that conversation needs to happen upfront. If this is the only money you have and you can only do things a certain way, that needs to be clear. Alternatively, you need to consider how to build in flexibility to adapt to changes as they come.
Henry Yu: I think that also speaks to what our strategic goals are as a university. If our goal is simply to create research knowledge, we need to be extremely careful about understanding what we’re doing and why, as it could potentially lead to bad outcomes inherently.
Creating new knowledge, for me, often feels redundant. From the perspective of community members, many times we already know what needs to be known. We just need validation so that when we apply for a grant, it’s recognized officially. There’s a sense in which we might be doing nothing more than formalizing, for grant purposes, something that our partners already understand well.
When partnered research is at its best, what does it look like?
Vicky Bungay: When it’s at its best, it looks nothing like what we might expect, I’ll say that first. There’s this utopian view that everything works seamlessly, everyone gets along, and we’re all moving towards the same goals without any changes or disruptions. But that’s not reality.
So, when it’s at its best, there’s humor involved, and we recognize that there’s no such thing as a perfect plan because you have to be adaptable and flexible. That’s one of the key aspects for me—being responsive to what’s happening in the moment.
For example, we might have a great study planned, but then a crisis occurs, or there’s a loss of programming or funding in a specific area. Our ability to work within those challenges and continue to collaborate and support each other is what it looks like at its best.
Ultimately, it’s about people having fun in their own way and feeling like they’re making meaningful contributions. It’s about learning together, even if it sometimes feels like we’re just validating what we already know. The process of validation often teaches us a lot about each other and what we’re capable of achieving together.
Success in partnership means recognizing people’s needs and the pressures they face. It’s about negotiating in a supportive way that benefits everyone involved in that environment. We’re always mindful of these factors as we work together.
Henry Yu: To me, what does it look like when it’s working? Over time, I think of those moments where we’ve collaborated with partners, and then we’re having those debrief discussions. We discuss what worked well and what didn’t. There’s this desire on the part of those partners to do more because the collaboration was energizing and rewarding. We accomplished something that had been needed for a long time. They want to explore other opportunities together. These moments are important because they show that, despite any mishaps or misunderstandings, our communication was effective enough that they still want to work with us.
What are we obligated to do to keep the relationship going? Perhaps we suggest a smaller project that aligns more closely with their needs as part of maintaining the relationship. Or maybe we decide to take a step back for a while to focus on other things. We might agree to reconnect in a couple of years. There have been times when we’ve picked up the collaboration again, and they’re in a different place capacity-wise with different goals. They needed that time away, and it’s important not to take that personally.
Having relationships that aren’t solely project-dependent is crucial. These are relationships where we’ve worked well enough together that we can revisit and ask, “Do you want to work on this together?” The best relationships are those built on trust, open communication, active listening, and goal-setting, not those that are project-dependent. There’s also a sense of accountability. When things go wrong, we debrief to understand why and take responsibility if needed. We’re not afraid to apologize and make adjustments to ensure it doesn’t happen again. That’s the essence of a good relationship.
Thank you for reading! We hope you enjoyed the interview and found valuable insights to enhance your partnered research initiatives.
We invite you to explore our other interviews and stay tuned for our upcoming workshops designed to further support your research journey.