Interactive futures Workshop

Day 2: Friday, 13 September

Our workshop is for anyone with an interest in participatory research, or a belief in its ability to create meaningful change. Our goal is to generate some collective intelligence about how to make participatory research work within universities. How do people work within institutional systems not traditionally designed for participatory research? How do they develop ways to work around barriers and constraints? How has this helped people work up ideas for more systemic change? In our session, we'll share our experiences, recount tough challenges, and imagine better ways for universities and funders to support participatory research. The workshop is a collaboration between the Co-Pro Futures Inquiry, and a major project on changing research cultures. The Co-Pro Futures Inquiry argues that the HEI sector needs to put its own house in order before better co-produced research can take place. It is addressing institutional constraints in the higher education sector that hinder more meaningful co-production of research. The Inquiry focuses on naming, and tackling, the many macro-level challenges to doing more and better co-produced research. The Inquiry team come from the Universities of Liverpool, Sheffield, and Manchester and are supported by a small two year cross-institutional award from UK Participatory Research Funds. The team at Newcastle University are using a participatory action research methodology to try to change our wider research culture, and are supported by a £1 million grant from the Wellcome Trust, as part of the Institutional Funding for Research Culture programme.