Report: UBC’s 2023 Partnering in Research Conference 

Participants want UBC to offer partnership and relationship-building training, guidelines and other useful resources to help equip researchers and staff with the skills and knowledge they need to do effective and ethical collaboration and partnership. To this end, they called on UBC to actively develop and advance best practices for community-based research and teaching, recognize community partners as equal collaborators, and invest in a university-wide culture that values and respects community contributions and community-university partnerships.

Participants suggest that UBC develop mechanisms to routinely and publicly acknowledge, value and showcase partnership contributions, approaches, achievements, and impacts.  

UBC should establish systems to formally recognize, reward, and compensate faculty, staff, students, and community partners for contributions in partnered research. Formal systems for rewards and recognition should be designed to acknowledge the context and challenges of community-university partnerships and formally recognize these as scholarly achievements. UBC is also called on to identify and address burdens and barriers in current financial compensation and reimbursement systems, so the expertise, efforts and contributions of community and university partners are appropriately remunerated using streamlined payment and reimbursement mechanisms. 

UBC should allocate increased funding and resources specifically for community-university partnerships and ensure that available resources are accessible and effectively supportive of sustainable partnership initiatives. In addition to financial resources, UBC should also allocate non-financial resources, including staff time, to enable and empower successful collaborations. 

UBC should actively promote, share, recognize, and publish Indigenous knowledge and the contributions of Indigenous community partners in partnership with Indigenous communities and organizations. The purpose of this work should be to respect and uplift Indigenous perspectives, traditions, and expertise in all aspects of research and engagement. 

UBC should provide additional support, training, and resources for graduate students who are engaged in partnered projects, or interested to participate in engaged research. The university should establish supports to address specific needs and challenges of graduate students and community partners to ensure both receive the necessary supports that can help these kinds of community-university research collaborations to thrive. 

UBC should create platforms and opportunities to recognize and acknowledge and incorporate community expertise, experiences, and knowledge into all aspects of partnered research initiatives.

UBC needs to secure buy-in and support from UBC decision-makers to enable successful development and sustainability of community-university partnerships and the above calls to action. UBC leadership should actively advocate for the value and significance of community-university partnerships and their alignment with UBC’s mission and values.

Simplify research work to engage a wider audience by avoiding complex terminology that hinders understanding and makes research less accessible. 

• This includes adopting Integrated Knowledge Translation (IKT) principles, taking care of one another, respecting and understanding knowledge user and stakeholder language and ways of communicating, and embracing diverse forms of knowledge mobilization and dissemination outside of academic norms, such as grey literature publications, arts-based approaches, visual displays, and storytelling. 

Student Testimonials 

“Sometimes you have to tone down some language in order to bring a diverse group of decision-makers and researchers together with the ultimate view of making change over time.” — Alysha McFadden 

“There is value in publishing grey literature to increase access to a broader audience and to decolonize knowledge.  Community review can also be used to validate work/knowledge for dissemination.” — Bonnie Leung 

Recognize and address the challenge that tokenism and power imbalance play in research partnerships by fostering empathy and openness, investing in power-sharing, and acknowledging and managing privilege. 

Student Testimonials:  

“Partnering in research is a long-commitment, not a one-step process … engage the partners in the decision-making process throughout.” — Jalisa Karim 

“It is time we think about equity through an intersectional lens to better understand the disproportionate barriers and compounding forms of oppression that individuals along the socioeconomic spectrum experience face. Partnered research needs to move away from outcomes of productivity and generalizability towards relationality and adaptability. Biases are inherent, but not necessarily bad. The same can be said about privilege. It is about how we use our voices or hold space for others.” — Ellen Wang

We need concerted effort at UBC and across the public sector to advocate for changes to more effectively support community leadership and meaningful long-term relationship-building with communities. At UBC, this includes more financial supports for community-engaged programs and initiatives and continued alignment of institutional actions with protocols and recommendations, particularly with Indigenous protocols and calls to action. 

Student Testimonials: 

“We need support from systems [and] an equity and justice audit of the institutions we work in and as researchers …. We also need better reporting on the strategies people are enacting in this work.” — Alanna Shwed 

“In one session they pointed to the need for fundingfor things like, “salary for youth engagement, stipends for advisory members, food and transit for meetings, potential resources for life support such as helping them get bank accounts. [Faculty] may need to consider additional supports acknowledging trauma and precariously housed and unhoused youth … Build it into your budget and timelines, justify it as the absolutely most important thing to be able to do this work.” — Lindsay Goodridge

The panel opened up by acknowledging their own positionality—ethnicity, gender, job roles, and more—and how each person’s experiences inform their perspectives, knowledge bases, and modes of engagement at work. Lerato and Paul highlighted the responsibility that we each hold in our roles at the university as faculty, administrators, and staff and how important it is to respectfully engage with one another and empower one another in the roles that we perform on behalf of the university. When working with external collaborators in community, we must recognize the perceived power and privilege that comes with being associated with the university. As representatives of the university, we must be aware that we are part of a system that has traditionally excluded and oppressed certain communities and ideas. By showing up in community-based work as one’s ‘whole-self,’ while maintaining professionalism, we can humanize our work, which can lead to more authentic partnerships and impactful research outcomes.  

In thinking more broadly about roles, the panel reflected on the role of the academy in community. Indeed, the academy is purposed to engage in creating solutions to the most pressing issues of our time. In partnered research, sometimes the most impactful role we can play as representatives of the university is to facilitate the convening of leaders around pressing issues and remove barriers for action so that community can create solutions for themselves. 

The panel noted that many of the partnered research projects featured in this year’s conference were conducted with communities facing oppression and strain. With research as a tool in addressing adversity, communities were flipping the conversation from scarcity and deficit to that of abundance. A key to successful collaborations was recognizing that communities being engaged in the research process are actually the deep experts on the issues being addressed. Seeing community as expert is pivotal to productive and impactful outcomes for all. Authentic research collaborations help to surface stories of hope and joy as well as identify viable and durable solutions. 

Over the course of the conference, it was clear to the panel that partnered research is led by change makers willing to share power and create space for untethered learning. Whether a community collaborator or a lead research investigator, those engaged in partnered research are visionaries. They are creative and vibrant. They are generous. They find productive ways forward to make the projects work, keeping community benefit and research excellence at the core of all they do. They find joy and energy in training the next generation of scholars, in building skills in community, and in learning with and from community. Those engaged in partnered research overcome fears of ‘uncertainty.’ Research in community is not as predictable as research in a laboratory—we cannot anticipate and control for all variables. Despite challenges from all angles, including administrative procedures, funding scarcity, communication hurdles, and more, those engaged in partnered research are at the forefront of innovation and are well positioned to create lasting, meaningful impact for society.

At present, the current design of academic research and the academy do not support partner engaged research, therefore limiting the university in meeting its goal of creating positive impacts for society (the foremost purpose of a public university). Tenure and promotion guidelines do not always appropriately value partnered research. Partnered research takes time and there is not always a guarantee that there will be a “productive” outcome: a grant acquired, a paper published in a high impact journal, a trainee thesis completed. In the tenure and promotion review, the university must find a way to recognize the partnered research process and in turn appropriately reward people for doing this kind of work.  

The panel also heard that more funding streams to support partnered research projects are needed. The funding streams that do exist are oversubscribed and are barely adequate to meet the full scope of activities in partnered research projects. University administrative procedures that are intended to support partnered research are not always appropriately responsive and can clash with equity and inclusion values that underpin partnered research projects. To enhance partnered research, numerous simultaneous shifts within the university systems are required. At a policy level within the university, a decolonization and racism audit and associated action plans would support enhanced partnered research endeavours. 

Across all levels—from senior decision makers to operational staff and students in all disciplines—the university needs to make partnered research a top priority if societal impact is the goal. The Knowledge Exchange Unit at the Vice President Research & Innovation Office as well as the Community Engagement at the Vice President External Relations Office are logical locations for which to deepen and expand this work. To facilitate partnered research endeavours, the university must continue to create connections amongst researchers and staff across faculties and departments. There would be so much value in making the ‘Partnered Research Conference’ an annual event while also pursuing informal interactions, such as social events and communities of practices. These initiatives would foster the development of relationships and would lead to knowledge sharing, thought leadership, and the advancement of best practices in partnered research. In turn, UBC will be seen as a leader in research with immediate and meaningful societal impact.

• Create categories for attendees to promote interaction, connection and knowledge-sharing within and across sectors and disciplines.​
• Design programming for more interactive and structured networking and relationship-building; there was concern about relying on the coffee break format for networking​.
• Include Peer-to-Peer Networking.

• Keynotes and Diverse Breakout Sessions, with Slight Over-Emphasis on Health—needed more disciplinary diversity, for instance covering topics such as food, climate, arts, law, public policy, engineering, etc.​
• Hold more practical sessions for attendees that facilitate connection and discussion between attendees with aligned goals and interests​
• Showcasing Partnerships and Transformative Power, including other formats (e.g. presentations, peer-to-peer networking)​
• Better balance of Academic Perspective vs. Community Partners’ Perspectives and Contributions.

• Set a comprehensive approach/definition to partnering in research to speak to wide array of sectors and disciplines​.
• In-person conference format made having remote speakers challenging​
• Hold conference regularly (annually or bi-annually)

• Increase presence and visibility of Community Groups/Individuals’ by increasing the ratio of partners as attendees, presenters and conference planners/volunteers.
• Signage, Sign Language Translation, People with Brain Injuries; larger font size on nametags​.
• Greater Representation of Indigenous Elders/Knowledge Keepers​
• Microphones in Classrooms​.
• Provide more food options and refreshments and ensure adequate stock throughout the conference.

While community partnerships were the focus of the conference and community attendees were included as both presenters and attendees, survey respondents strongly recommended further enhancing the visibility of community engagement and community representatives in all aspects of the conference. Specifically, they emphasized: ​

• The importance of including community partners in the planning stages​
• Creating opportunities for interaction and collaboration with and for community representatives​.
• Showcasing the number and diversity of community partners and partnerships​.
• Incorporating Indigenous knowledges, knowledge keepers/Elders and perspectives throughout more of the day​.
• Recognizing the need for capacity building to support community organizations in their engagement with UBC​.
• Increasing visible community representation as presenters, particularly in keynotes, and in overall ratio of partners to researchers in attendance.