Dialogue
Dialogue is essential for generating shared understanding between researchers and potential users of the research.
Hearing potential users questioning the research from practical experience is, for the research team, part of investigating, developing and ensuring its wider practical and policy significance.
‘Knowledge exchange’ beyond academia, and across sectors, involves professionals with different understanding, concerns and priorities. Dialogue is vital for gaining a different insight, for asking questions directly, and for working out what to communicate with whom.
Contrary to the usual academic assumption, practitioners need different detail, not less detail, than an academic report. Enabling people to use research makes demands on the evidence and on the outputs. The key challenge is not just format or style; it’s content.
PublicSpace can work closely with a research team to develop a coherent approach, make the dialogue useful to all, and gain insight from it. We bring expertise from social science research, from professional education, and from facilitating cross-sector interaction between researchers, practitioners, policy makers, industry and publics around complex academic, scientific and technological issues.
Our role as a semi-outsider is often vital in helping to hear the issues and concerns behind the detail, and in working out how to respond to them. It is highly valuable also when articulating concepts from the research which may be very familiar to the team but need elaboration for others.
Here we outline a few examples from current and past projects.
Interviewing key policy-makers and stakeholders to explore policy priorities, concerns and issues.
Interviewing current and potential users of the research, to explore their interest, priorities, concerns and potential uses of the research, and to develop useful case studies.
Discussing with key researchers, experts and research participants, to explore concepts, research claims and limitations, and to develop illustrative examples.
Facilitating workshop discussions, and presenting analysis of issues and concerns raised in interviews, to generate understanding across sectors and move the debate forward.
Public consultation through public interviews and/or enabling focussed interaction in discussion groups or citizen panels. Image: a citizen panel for UK CoRWM. More…
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Organising events with opportunities for potential users to engage in discussion with the research team, to have guided hands-on experience and/or to discuss issues previously recorded on video.
If would like us to work with you to engage in dialogue with particular groups about your research, and/or to disseminate it more widely, please contact us.
Lancaster UK