Building durable and meaningful research connections with communities is central to our research and work. Through this panel we will identify best practices for engaging with new partners and sustaining long-term collaborations, consider how we can assess the success of such initiatives, and reflect on the impact of COVID-19 on community-university research networks. This conversation also links to broader discussions on research ethics within community-university partnerships (Wood, 2017) and questions of how meaningful collaboration is built (Levac and Denis, 2019; Wallerstein et al., 2020). Our goal with this panel is to build a rich discussion on these themes, and we invite participants who are interested in community-based research or teaching, have collaborated with non-university partners in their work, or have considered participatory-action research and related methods.

Authors:

Marie Louise Aastrup, Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Business Administration, Memorial University

Julia Christensen, Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Planning, Queen’s University

Camille Ouellet-Dallaire, Assistant Professor, Program in Environment and Sustainability, Memorial University

Roza Tchoukaleyska, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography & Environment, Western University

Sylvia Wood, Director of Research & Development, Habitat

Panel convenor: Roza Tchoukaleyska, Department of Geography & Environment, Western University