Journey Through the Groan Zone with Academics and Practitioners: Bridging Conflict and Difference to Strengthen Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery Work

Abstract

Academic-practitioner divides in disaster management and research can be persistent and pernicious, bearing consequences for disaster survivors and future affected populations. The gap between disaster professionals and academic researchers is often treated as an unavoidable structural problem or a neutral accident of professional silos and circumstance. We suggest that these gaps are not neutral, and that they can and must be overcome. With hundreds of millions of people affected by disaster each year and recovery costs skyrocketing, there is urgency in connecting researcher and practitioner knowledges to avoid expensive mistakes and most importantly, to decrease human suffering. Yet the difficulties that US academic anthropologists and practitioners experienced in their efforts to collaborate became evident in a cross-sector National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded workshop on the relevance of culture in disaster work. We suggest and illustrate how more systematic cross-field communication can be operationalized through engaging in an ongoing and relational process of bridging. Such a process can offer long-term benefits to the people and institutions involved, dramatically enhance the science of disaster management, and help reduce the social and material costs of disaster impacts.Keywords Academic and practitioner divide Á Applied research Á Cross-sector communication Á Culture and disaster Á Disaster anthropology Á Disaster management

Bridging the data divide between practitioners and academics

“…In particular, researchers should focus on the problem they are solving for the manager, not the research problem they are interested in investigating. The previous literature states that “the most recognized source of disconnection stems from issues of communication, especially inaccessible language widespread in jargon-laden academic writing” (Browne et al , 2018). When communicating with managers, academics should, therefore, acknowledge and indeed expect different world views and communication styles.…”

Stories for Interdisciplinary Disaster Research Collaboration

“…This would provide a method or process for “sharing meanings” across disciplines in a way that helps expose differences in worldviews and language, as recommended by Hardy (2018). Stories are also imminently social, and this sociability can arguably provide a nudge toward building trust between a teller and listeners, although the initial telling may be difficult and even painful (Browne, O'Connell, & Yoder, 2018).…”

“…The workshop should be run by a skilled facilitator, with a scribe or graphical notetaker to collate stories and summarize discussion, when at all possible. People outside normal academic and funding channels might be invited to participate, including practitioners (Browne et al., 2018; Secord, 2014). The workshop could thus produce a collection of stories and generate group discussion and collaborative interpretations.…”

Debating the Relationship Between Academics and Practitioners in the Higher Education Field

“…Danica FINK-HAFNER, Tamara DAGEN As a rule, the relation between academic research and practice has been an issue debated in many fields. Among them have been international relations (Hill and Beshoff, eds., 1994), finances (Cagle et al, 1997), management (Brennan, 2004), computer science, education, healthcare, information systems, library and information science, management, nursing, political science, psychology, sociology and social work (Belli, 2010;Lahat, 2019), emergency management (Cwiak, 2007), disaster management (Browne et al, 2018) and increasingly the field of public health (Smith and Wilkins, 2018) as well as library and information science (Chang, 2021).…”