The third episode of the IGDC’s Decolonising Development Research Podcast explored research impact. Like many institutions, the University of York defines impact as when the knowledge generated by research contributes to, benefits, and influences society, culture, the environment, and the economy. This broad definition has developed over time to account for the diverse benefits research can bring to different communities and issues. But does impact need decolonising just as partnerships and methods do?
To discuss the matter we were joined by: Professor Clarice Mota of the Institute of Collective Health at the Federal University of Bahia, where she focuses on the public health of communities affected by social vulnerability, racial inequality, and neglected diseases; and by Dr Toni Rouhana of the Centre for the Comparative Study of Civil War at the University of York, where he researches the mobilisation of religious identity in conflict and in peace. Though the speakers came from very different disciplines, they were united in their approach to impact because they both research crises that devastate Global South societies in similar ways: disease in Professor Mota’s case and civil conflict in Dr Rouhana’s.
Both panellists agreed that research impact needs to be decolonised. Established practice overwhelmingly concentrates research benefits in the Global North, while Global South communities often see little positive impact from research. If anything, they can stand to lose out from engaging in conventional research.
Professor Mota told the podcast that many Global South communities are suspicious of public health researchers, believing they only extract data and bring no benefit. This extraction, Mota says, is part of the process of colonialism. There is a clear analogy between the way colonialism plundered material resources from the Global South to enrich the Global North and the way conventional research today takes information from the South to benefit the North. Over time, this extractive dynamic has earned research institutions a bad reputation in the Global South. Tragically, this can be most apparent where effective research and innovation is most needed, such as in Professor Mota’s discipline of public health or Dr Rouhana’s field of peace-building.
Impact according to whom?
Countering the long history of extraction and distrust is not easy. Both Professor Mota and Dr Rouhana said it was essential to identify what non-researchers want from research and concentrate project benefits within non-research Global South societies. For decolonial research, impact must be central to research design from the outset, not something added to the end of a project.
Both speakers emphasised the centrality of local voices in determining what impact projects should have. But this raises the question of what constitutes a “community” and who speaks for it? This is particularly apparent in Dr Rouhana’s field of peacebuilding where multiple community interests exist, sometimes in violent opposition. He said sociologists frequently use “fixers” as intermediaries between the researcher and the community, but fixers can be problematic because: they keep a distance between the researcher and the researched; they do not sufficiently engage the people the research concerns; and they are often professionals or upper-class, so cannot necessarily represent the whole community.
A better way of determining what impact should be was provided by Professor Mota who gave the example of the Community Advisory Groups, as used throughout the ECLIPSE project. These were groups of diverse community members representing local interests and advising on the impact they wanted to see. Professor Mota said assembling and maintaining these groups was not without challenge, but felt they were certainly successful in building a “horizontal environment” of input and engagement for the ECLIPSE project. The groups also helped researchers manage unrealistic community expectations, which was another challenge when it came to research impact for ECLIPSE. The lesson learned was that decolonising impact requires researchers “to listen more than to speak” and to be grounded in the social context in which their research takes place.
The need for institutional change
Another challenge identified was institutional resistance. Professor Mota pointed out that institutions conventionally evaluate impact according to long-term benefits that can be measured and compared. But this clashes with decolonial impact which is often subjective, hard to quantify, and unique to local contexts. Our speakers said that rather than through quantifiable data, decolonial impact can more effectively be showcased through case studies of localised benefit and detailed community feedback.
Dr Rouhana added that institutional regulations can be another obstacle. He gave the example of Lebanese combatants-turned-campaigners who wanted their names included in research outputs, but ethics guidelines demanded anonymity even though the activists were well-known campaigners. This one-rule-for-all institutional approach can be frustrating for both researchers and community partners and perpetuates the trope that the researcher controls and owns the project while partners are treated as passive sources of information.
Another systemic challenge to decolonising impact is the need to publish in European languages, especially English. This contradicts a fundamental tenet of decolonising impact which states that research outputs must be understandable to the community they concern. Impact will remain colonial until disseminating findings to the community is prioritised above academic publication. This is fundamental to the “output, outcome, impact” cycle of decolonised research.
Beyond publication, Dr Rouhana highlighted other institutional obstacles, such as the difficulty in getting visas for Global South researchers to attend events in the Global North and the parallel disinterest of Global North institutions in supporting events in the Global South. This echoed similar points made in Episode One by Emilie Flower who identified the same bureaucratic challenges when working to decolonise research partnerships. This kind of institutionalised administrative challenge can exclude Global South partners from the discussion element of research, when findings are shared with fellow researchers, sector professionals, and policy-makers. This also means they are shut out of important networking opportunities, where in-roads can be forged and career-building relationships established.
Both speakers agreed that the academy is moving in the right direction, but “we have a long road” and “we need to run”. They urged that researchers work with their community partners to forefront their needs and priorities, whilst also being open and upfront about realities of individual projects. At the same time, pressure needs to be put on institutions to encourage them to support and invest in work with decolonial impact. “This needs to happen now” and the status quo of concentrating benefits in the Global North whilst paying lip-service to improvements in the Global South should not be allowed to continue.
A powerful point made by Dr Rouhana underscores the importance of decolonising impact: “research does not stay in our books”. Indeed, as the ECLIPSE project has shown, research can have demonstrable positive impacts on people’s lives and can influence policy with long-lasting benefits, if its impact is done right.