Creating Spaces for Engagement: Understanding Research and Social Change

Abstract

This report draws on the experiences over six years of an international research network - the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (Citizenship DRC) - involving over 40 researchers working in 12 countries. It explains how Citizenship DRC researchers have defined influence in terms of their work, who they have engaged with and how, in order to trace the process of creating spaces to engage with stakeholders in order to communicate the research results. What emerges from this analysis is that research processes are highly political, affecting both the researched and the researchers themselves, in different ways. As a result, both researchers and those who participate in research become political actors in the policy and practice