Revisiting ethical challenges in community-university research partnerships

This interactive workshop will consider what has changed in the last 10 years in our understandings of the ethical challenges faced by participatory researchers and in the institutional systems that might promote and support ethical research, and what further work we need to do. As participatory research becomes more popular and visible in academia, more mainstream, is there a danger of losing its ethical edge – its distinctive and risky creativity - or is there a need to regulate and tame a potentially unruly, unscientific and sometimes harmful practice? Who sets the ethical agenda and what is the role of communities in determining what counts as ‘ethical practice’? The aim of the workshop is to inspire each other through sharing examples of good and challenging practice, firing us up to promote and protect ethical practice in CBPR and community-university research partnerships.    

Booking is essential as numbers are limited: Please book here [LINK TO EVENTBRITE]

Parking: There is metered street parking in Old and New Elvet, or multi-story parking at the Prince Bishops Car Park near the Market Place.

Further details

During 2011-2012, the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action worked with community and university partners and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement  (NCCPE) to develop and publish a set of ethical guidelines for community-based participatory research (CBPR). These guidelines outlined the key principles (e.g. mutual respect, democratic participation, collective action) and how to put them into practice to tackle ethical challenges (issues relating to rights, responsibilities, harms, benefits, power and conflict) in the collaborative research process. Ten years later these guidelines have just been revised (see https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/institutes-and-centres/social-justice-community-action/research-areas/ethics-consultation/)

In this workshop we will introduce the second edition of the ethical guidance and will consider:

1. What has changed in the last 10 years – both in terms of the ethical challenges facing community university research partnerships, and in the receptiveness of universities to supporting ethical practice in this approach to research?
2. What more needs to change – in terms of the systems, structures, attitudes and cultures that are needed to underpin ethical community-university research partnerships? What role is there for community-based ethical review?

We will offer short presentations on current ethical challenges in CBPR, with perspectives from inside and outside the academy, including a contribution from visiting fellow Pradeep Narayanan on the development of community-based ethical review boards in India. In break out groups we will invite participants to share experiences of successful changes and continuing obstacles in UK universities and discuss these key questions:

1. What counts as ethical practice, and whose responsibility it is to enable and ensure it?
2. How and why do universities change?
3. As participatory research becomes more popular with funders and universities, is there a danger of losing its distinctive dynamism and creativity if it becomes ‘mainstreamed’?

Contributors

Sarah Banks is Professor in the Department of Sociology and co-founder of the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action at Durham University, joint convenor the UK Participatory Research Network and a participatory action researcher with a particular interest in ethics.

Pradeep Narayanan is Director of Research, Praxis – Institute for Participatory Practices, New Delhi, India, and Visiting Research Fellow with the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action, Durham University. He works on participatory research programmes with communities facing marginalization in India and recently initiated the establishment of a community-based ethical review process.  

Sue Shaw is Chair of the Steering Group of the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action at Durham University. Now retired, she spent her working career in community development, with an emphasis on rural communities.