Promoting Meaningful and Equitable Relationships? Exploring the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Funding Criteria from the Perspectives of African Partners

Grieve, Tigist; Mitchell, Rafael

doi:10.1057/s41287-020-00274-z

Cited by 30 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Structural limitations : Despite calls for equity by funders, workshop participants noted that research funding calls often continue to stipulate that the role of ‘principal investigator’ is restricted to the academic partner in the Global North (Grieve and Mitchell, 2020). Or, in commissioned projects ‘international’ rather than ‘local’ consultants are requested to lead projects.…”

Section: The Ethics Of Knowledge Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical research landscapes in fragile and conflict-affected contexts: understanding the challenges

Shanks

Paulson

2022

Research Ethics

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As the prevalence of conflict and fragility continue to rise around the world, research is increasingly heralded as a solution. However, current ethical guidelines for working in areas suffering from institutional and social fragility, insecurity or violent conflict have been heavily critiqued as highly abstract; focussed only on data collection; detached from the realities of academia in the Global South; and potentially extractive. This article seeks to respond to that assessment by spotlighting some of the most prevalent challenges researchers face in the pursuit of ethical working practices. It explores the material and epistemic injustices that often shape and underpin research structures and relationships in these contexts. The paper draws on the authors’ experiences of research in conflict-affected and fragile contexts over the last fifteen years and on workshop discussions with researchers based in fragile and conflict-affected contexts conducted in Amman, Bogotá and Dhaka in 2019-2020. The paper works from the premise that achieving ethical research in fragile spaces is not dependent solely on activity at the site of research, but also on decisions made across the entire ecosystem of a research project. It therefore interrogates the full research landscape, from funding models, to research design (including research topics, partnerships, methods, participant selection, and researcher positionality), to dissemination plans and ethical gatekeeping. The paper critically reflects on inequities in the processes of knowledge production about conflict and fragility and the key ethical challenges that researchers encounter. It highlights the need for further guidance, support and accountability to ensure ethical research practices.

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Section: The Ethics Of Knowledge Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical research landscapes in fragile and conflict-affected contexts: understanding the challenges

Shanks

Paulson

2022

Research Ethics

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“…This has led, it is argued, to research that is driven by external agendas (Pilon 2016) and "dislocated from national contexts" (Maclure 2006, 82). Attempts to mitigate this have included the Dutch government's demand-driven research partnerships of the 1990s (Bradley 2017) and more recently the UK's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), which explicitly calls for shared agenda setting and "equitable relationships between UK research institutions and developing country partners" (GCRF 2017, 1; see also Grieve and Mitchell 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Education Research in Sub-Saharan Africa: Quality, Visibility, and Agendas

Mitchell

Rose

Asare

2020

Comparative Education Review

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This article combines large-scale bibliometric analysis of publications on education by researchers based in sub-Saharan Africa with researchers' accounts of their priorities and practice. Patterns in the thematic foci of the research from 48 countries in the region are considered from the perspective of international policy statements (the Education Sustainable Development Goal and the African Union's Agenda 2063), alongside analysis of funding, coauthorship, and citations. We find a large number of publications by these scholars in reputable journals that merit greater scholarly engagement. Furthermore, evidence presented in this article challenges claims about the dominance of Northern research agendas in sub-Saharan Africa.The authors gratefully acknowledge funding by Education Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA) and the Jacobs Foundation; the research participants who generously gave their time; Rui da Silva for his work cataloging Portuguese language research; and the anonymous peer reviewers and others who provided valuable feedback on this article, including participants at CIES 2018, BAICE 2018, and colleagues at the REAL Centre,

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“…It was sponsored by the Global Challenges Research Fund Quality Related (GCRF-QR) funding directed by the national funding agency, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to help consolidate research partnerships in lower and middle income countries. In following GCRF guidelines on co-developing equitable partnerships (Grieve and Mitchell, 2020), we designed the research to be participatory (Bergold and Thomas, 2012), around a collaborative workshop format drawing upon sources that promote workshops as data collection methods (Binet et al, 2019;Ørngreen and Levinsen, 2017). Four senior librarians , with over 40 years' experience between them, from three academic libraries in Rwanda were invited to participate in the workshop: two from the University of Rwanda and one each from the University of the Lay Adventists of Kigali and the Ruhengeri Institute of Higher Education.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Librarians’ Perceptions of the Challenges for Researchers in Rwanda and the Potential of Open Scholarship

Cox

Abbott

2021

Libri

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Open scholarship is a major reform movement within research. This paper seeks to understand how open scholarship might address the challenges faced by research in Africa, through a study based on a participatory collaborative workshop to create a partnership with librarians in Rwanda. The literature review identifies three broad perspectives on the apparent under-performance of Rwandan research: one locating the issue in the unequal scholarly communications system, a second pointing to a country deficit and a third blaming cognitive injustices. The Rwandan librarians see researchers as challenged through the pressures on them to publish, the costs of research, poor infrastructure, lack of skills and limited access to literature. Collectively these challenges constitute a critical barrier to research. These limits fit largely the country deficit perspective. Open scholarship as conceived in the Global North is only a small part of the answer to the challenges faced by Rwandan scholars. To promote equity, notions of open scholarship need to take into account the conditions under which research is conducted in less privileged contexts such as Rwanda.

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Promoting Meaningful and Equitable Relationships? Exploring the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Funding Criteria from the Perspectives of African Partners

Cited by 30 publications

References 14 publications

Ethical research landscapes in fragile and conflict-affected contexts: understanding the challenges

Ethical research landscapes in fragile and conflict-affected contexts: understanding the challenges

Education Research in Sub-Saharan Africa: Quality, Visibility, and Agendas

Librarians’ Perceptions of the Challenges for Researchers in Rwanda and the Potential of Open Scholarship

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