Community–university research partnerships (CURPs) comprise a diverse group of stakeholders who share differing capabilities and diverse insights into the same issues, and they are widely regarded as valuable to navigate the best course of action. Partnering as co-researchers is core to nurturing these partnerships, but it requires careful navigation of complexities. The different insider and outsider positionalities occupied by co-researchers highlight experiences of ‘walking on the edges’ of each other’s worlds. This not only challenges these collaborations, but also enables a depth of understanding that may not be achieved in CURPs where the luxury of, or effort in, building a team of co-researchers to collect, analyse and write up data is not present. This article focuses on learning strategies to advance the co-researching capacities of CURPs where stakeholders occupy divergent positions. The focus will be on lessons from a co-researching partnership comprising a university-affiliated academic researcher, a local Kenyan non-governmental organization (NGO) and members of a community in which the NGO worked. We argue that applying selected learning strategies may facilitate positive experiences of edge walking and enhance the meaningful two-way sharing required for cross-cultural CURPs. It is recommended that community and university research partners examine the utility of these learning strategies for strengthening co-researching in CURP contexts.

The call to decolonise research processes and knowledge produced through them has spawned a powerful shift in working relationships between community researchers and members of local communities. Adaptation of a traditional conversational space in a community-based participatory research study offers a context-specific example of a decolonising method for data collection and as pathways for change. This article reports on learnings encountered while adapting the space and highlights the relevance for other cultural contexts. We present principles to adapt traditional conversational spaces both for collecting data and as a means of working in partnership with indigenous communities to enable different ways of knowing and action.