The Rethinking Research Collaborative (RRC) was an international network of networks including research organisations, civil society organisations, social movements, international NGOs and research brokers, training providers and funders who were committed to working together to explore the politics of participation in knowledge for international development and to encourage more inclusive and responsive collaboration in order to produce more relevant research.

Founded through an ESRC-funded seminar series in 2014, a network-building and agenda-setting grant from the Open University in 2017 and a grant from UKRI for strategic research to inform fairer and more equitable research collaboration in the context of their Oversees Development Assistance (ODA) funded research, the RRC evolved from a UK-focussed network (with core partners including The Open University, Christian Aid, INTRAC, Bond and UKCDR) to an international movement (with partners including the UNESCO Chair programme in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, Global Development Network, Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), Praxis Institute for Participatory Practices, MS TCDC and the pan-African social movement Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity.)

In 2019 the RRC was awarded first prize for ‘Best External Research Collaboration’ at the Open University’s 50th Birthday Research Awards. We produced a series of influential Principles for Fair and Equitable Research Collaborations, publications on ‘Evidence and the Politics of Participation‘, ‘Rethinking Research Impact‘ and ‘Moving Beyond Partnership with Systems Thinking and Complexity Theory‘ a series of high-impact learning resources and reports for funders such as UKRI and network organisations such as Bond.

Building on our collective commitment to decolonising international development as well as our research which increasingly called into question the value of ‘research partnerships’ over and above more sustained investment in research systems in the global South, in 2021 we took the decision to disband the RRC as an expert network and instead to support the ongoing work of our southern-based partners. Please refer to the work of the UNESCO Chair programme in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, Global Development Network, Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), Praxis Institute for Participatory Practices, MS TCDC, Africans Rising for Justice, Peace and Dignity and Southern Voice for ongoing commentary on research collaboration for international development.

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  • Our Discussion Guide and Tool Kit – NOW AVAILABLE!

    The Rethinking Research Partnerships process involved a series of seminars/workshops bringing together a group of UK staff from INGOs and universities to explore and learn from their experiences in research partnerships. Two years on, and after a lot of discussion and analysis we have pulled together the insights and learnings into an exciting new publication:…

  • Producing Evidence for Development – Conference Report

    The final event in the RRP seminar series took the form of a high-level conference. Around 100 participants (academics, students, NGO practitioners, knowledge brokers/trainers, consultants, policy makers and research funders) attended over the two-day event. The conference responded to the context of ‘Brexit Britain’ to explore how research partnerships between academics and INGOs might contribute…

  • Call for Expressions of Interest to ESRC Seminar Series Final Conference: ‘Producing evidence for development in Brexit Britain’

    The recent ratification of the SDGs heralds a new landscape of evidence for international development. A broader conception of ‘development’ combines with heightened pressure on policies and interventions to demonstrate their ‘evidence base’ and for research to demonstrate its usefulness. This has implications for the notion of expertise: whose knowledge counts? And how can diverse…

  • The Problem with ‘Partnerships’: Learning from the experience of ‘partnerships’ for ‘urban regeneration’ across the UK

    By Chik Collins (University of the West of Scotland) – 16th February 2016 From the beginning of our seminar series in early 2015, I have been struck by the parallels between our discussions of ‘research partnerships’ and the experience of ‘partnerships’ for ‘urban regeneration’ across the UK. The parallels seemed more striking when we met…

  • Reflections on establishing and sustaining partnership

    By Shelly Makleff – 4th June 2015 The April 2015 Rethinking Research Partnerships seminar focused on the theme ‘establishing and sustaining partnerships’. One particular research partnership was examined as a case study, and the analysis and discussions pulled from the rich range of experiences of everyone in the room. The crowd comprised a combination of academics,…

  • Rethinking research partnerships from a practitioner’s perspective

    By Jill Russell – 6th May 2015 Academic and iNGO partnerships are happening because people are engaging. The 40 people in the room at the first meeting of the Re-thinking Research Partnership meeting in February, 2015 demonstrate this. Why are NGO practitioners engaging in partnerships with academics? One of my favourite children’s books that I…

  • Contexts that Encourage Research Partnerships

    By Kate Gooding – May 2015 We had lots of really useful discussions at the second seminar, focused on establishing and sustaining partnerships. One aspect that I found interesting was thinking through conditions that enabled the case study partnership. While there were inevitably challenges, the university and NGO did work together to produce research that…

  • ‘Partnerships’ or ‘relationships’? Rethinking research partnerships from a practitioner’s perspective

    By Flora Cornish – 16th March 2015 In the first context-setting seminar of our ‘Evidence & the Politics of Participation’ seminar series, 38 of us convened in Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church’s Friendship Centre for a day, followed by a smaller group planning meeting the following morning. Some were employed as academics by universities, some worked in…

  • Positions/perspectives/ understandings/ideas

    February 13th 2015 As part of our context-setting workshop we asked for position statements from a selection of key UK-based sector organisations. Here are the presentations: BOND – University-INGO research partnerships: A (very) brief history (presentation): Mistry_NGO Academic collaboration 260215[1] Buffardi, Anne (ODI) Maximizing meaning, mutually: INGO research partnerships INTRAC Maintaining momentum in research collaboration NCCPE – The…

  • Developing the Seminar Series

    By Jude Fransman and Kate Newman – February 2015 The first hazy outlines of this seminar series were sketched through a chance encounter of two sleep-deprived mums on maternity leave in North London. We had known each other a little in the past – having both worked in different capacities for ActionAid and with IDS – and we had…