The DSA hosted a webinar on the topic of NGO and researcher collaboration to tackle inequality and injustice with:

It quickly became clear in the webinar that researchers should also consider collaboration with communities, with Beth Chitekwe-Biti reminding us that “Researchers should not just talk to NGOs to the exclusion of communities who face the issues first-hand.” Beth talked about the importance of citizen-led development, pointing out that citizens of African cities often collect their own data but need the help of academia and NGOs to use this data to deliver policy changes.

Beth cautioned that by the time the researchers come to a community the problem has been defined, and the community has to respond to a problem that has been defined without them. Collaboration, she said, is about long term relationships, so the community have a say in what needs researching.

At a practical level, Sandra Martinsone from Bond pointed out that researchers and NGOs work at a different pace.

The audience also raised the issue of funding challenges, that NGOs don’t have funding to commission research. Mike Jennings from SOAS pointed out that the funding councils require researchers to define the research problem as part of the funding bid, another challenge which requires addressing for better collaborations.

To hear the full discussion around these points and more watch the video below.

The speakers and the audience provided the following resources on the discussion points: