Trialling an Emergent Working Approach to Address Equality Barriers to Collaboration with External Partners

We propose to trial an emergent working approach that challenges how we devise research projects and lead them. The trial is designed to focus on community knowledge and co-creation. In so doing, we posit that to create conditions for sustainable responses to address inequalities and marginalisation, we need to centre the knowledge and ambitions of the communities impacted by various forms of change, from wider global challenges to community tensions, such as those triggered by anti-immigration narratives. We are clear that this requires, at the most fundamental level, addressing equality barriers to collaboration with external partners to maximise the expertise and ‘knowledge power’ we have available. Importantly, these barriers can exist at both ends: within Strathclyde in terms of the under-representation of groups and for external partners around who even chooses to / feels enabled to work with a university.

This was an unsuccessful application of approximately £30,000 made to an internal Collaborative Cultures funding call in October 2024.