Welcome to the Partnering for Equitable Research course.  

This course is a response to ongoing concerns about how we make research more equitable. It is part of a wave of initiatives that aim to make these shifts but this course puts flesh to these issues by providing real life examples of the issues that people come across, how they navigate them and what their advice is.  

The years of experience in multi-partner, multi-country projects, and the hundreds of collaborations, that sit behind this course and within the exhibits in the gallery have shown us that striving for fairness is messy and uncomfortable. It is also about recognising that context matters. Each project, team, partnership, participant and research situation are unique, but each is also an opportunity to learn a general principle around equitable partnership as we showcase through the gallery.    

Equity needs courage. To be open and outspoken in confronting power imbalances that are disadvantaging partners or groups in research relationships.  

Equity needs self-reflection. A willingness to honest, critical, review of our own ways of thinking and working and the institutions we work within.  

Equity is more than an output. Research projects have many different aspects and components. An equity lens needs to be held up to each and every one and not just as a one-off exercise. Evaluating equity should be an ongoing and constant process from project pre-start (agenda setting and bid development) to post-end (creating lasting legacies beyond time bound project cycles).   

That said. We want to acknowledge that these resources are the fruits of imperfect work!  

Embodying equity in practice requires actively embracing complexity and discomfort if we are to truly unsettle power hierarchies and make our research fairer. To do this is not easy and you are unlikely to get it right first, or every, time. We certainly haven’t.     

Our experiences have taught us that at its core, research partnership equity is about always striving to be, and do, research better. More fairly.  

Your curiosity has brought you to this course, so you are already embracing this ideal.   

Thank you for joining us on this journey.   

Taken by a young refugee participant in the DEPA Uganda project, this image represents how he views his life - 'The road is long, winding and bumpy, but the journey is worth it'. 

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