In the first of two blogs on knowledge translation (KT) in the global South, I will share learning from a newly published IDRC-funded research synthesis report. My second blog will explore implications for research agendas.
Entitled Knowledge Translation in the Global South: Bridging Different Ways of Knowing for Equitable Development, the report provides recommendations for funders to support more effective structures and strategies for the use of research for equitable development.
Our year-long project explored the KT strategies, practices and theories researchers and research intermediaries use in the global South, and the challenges they experience, and identifies the types of support required from research funders.
A team led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and OTT Consulting conducted a systemised exploratory review of the literature and primary research on the lived experience of KT actors, including researchers, knowledge brokers, research users and key opinion formers in this field.
Recommendations for funders of knowledge translation (KT), research into use and knowledge brokering systems
It would be easy to allow this research to simply be absorbed into the wider literature on evidence production and use for development without making much difference to the debates and the policies that are shaping knowledge systems.
We therefore set out a series of actionable recommendations for funders, as follows:
1. Create KT challenge funds and support institutionalisation of KT culture
Funders should empower researchers and their national and international partners to shape research design and determine their own change objectives. This could include challenge funds that allow research teams to shape their own plans for engaging research with policy or practice.
2. Co-develop culturally appropriate systems for KT monitoring and evaluation
Funders should play a key role by developing and valuing culturally and politically responsive indicators for KT monitoring, evaluation and learning. These must be sensitive to the iterative and informal nature of relationship and trust-building, and what constitutes success in different contexts.
3. Take a programme-level approach to supporting KT
Funders should take a more structured approach to supporting research systems, creating more space for the co-production of research and change agendas and ceasing to treat KT in isolation from broader issues and processes relating to equitable research partnerships, social movements, advocacy and governance.
4. Strengthen research capacity and facilitate mutual learning
Funders can play a key role in facilitating mutual learning between KT actors. They should incorporate capacity-strengthening costs, ranging from more traditional research communications, to community engagement and advocacy, to knowledge brokering and policy influencing.
5. Support multi-actor, multi-level networks for mobilising diverse forms of knowledge
Funders should take a more holistic approach to strengthening the capacity of multi-actor networks that have a common interest in solving a particular problem. Bilateral donors are in a unique position to broker relationships between their country missions or posts and regional offices, local researchers and knowledge intermediaries, governments, communities and global policy actors.
6. Position Southern research for global learning and engagement
Funders can support Southern researchers to make their work more accessible on a global scale. Meaningful investment can connect local knowledge and research to global debates.
7. Embrace complexity and risk
Donors should be willing to learn from failures and celebrate them as learning opportunities, creating a more authentic relationship with grantees. KT actors in the global South understand that change is non-linear, that major disruptions occur that derail research to policy and practice initiatives and that some successes are down to serendipity.
Bridging the gap between scholarship and practice on KT
We do not have all the answers, but I hope this study can be used to help move the dial and provide some practical ways forward. In my next blog I will share what this research says about opportunities to pioneer new understandings of how to mobilise research evidence in diverse settings.
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