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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Seminar 1: Participant contributions

To inform the first (context-setting) seminar and the broader framings of the seminar series, we are inviting participants to submit contributions based on their own experiences/perspectives.

  • Contributions can take one of two forms: 
    • ‘position papers’/’think pieces’ giving either an organisation’s or individual’s perspective on research partnerships (and ideally focusing on the role of evidence and/or the politics of participation within them)
    • Case studies of a specific research partnership including background to the project, the nature of the partnership (how long it ran/has run for, what its focus is, who is involved and in what ways etc.) and any key issues in terms of participation and how knowledge/evidence has been perceived in the partnership – i.e. what worked, key challenges and general reflections on the process to date
  • Contributions should be short (1-2 sides max) and don’t have to be written. Participants might produce a powerpoint slide, poster/visualisation/hand-drawn sketches or multimedia texts. We will display the contributions in a market-place session at the first seminar where participants will have the opportunity to discuss them.

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