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Community-university research partnerships (CURPs) can be mutually beneficial but not all manage to co-create knowledge. Though much has been written on conditions for and obstacles to success, less is known about specific factors that may help. This paper adds to emerging literature on this issue by examining how two CURPs, using different community-based research approaches in divergent contexts, found ways to address challenges and co-create knowledge. The Canadian partnership sought to foster knowledge sharing on parenting children with disabilities among researchers, practitioners, community groups and members. The rural Kenyan CURP tested usefulness of a traditional gathering space for fostering intergenerational "sex-talk", hoping to enhance communication between community stakeholders and make accessing health services more acceptable. After presenting main features of both, we identify factors that helped each succeed in its unique context then explore factors that cut across the two. Three common facilitating factors emerged: early and ongoing partner involvement, presence of a safe climate, and knowledge translation for diverse users. Two of these have received scant attention to date, suggesting some implications for practice. As we cannot assume community partners feel safe sharing, researchers need to identify potential barriers and design strategies to reduce them. We also need to explore, document, and share innovative ways to make knowledge accessible for diverse users. Finally, as flexibility and creativity were key to success of both CURPs, these aspects should be emphasized in teaching community researchers. Further work could document innovations and evaluate their effectiveness in helping co-creation of knowledge happen.

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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.