Building bridges and breaking down silos: a framework for developing interdisciplinary, international academic-community research collaborations for the benefit of sexual and gender minority youth

Interdisciplinary collaboration fuels research innovation and funders are increasingly offering long-term grants prioritizing partnerships. However, a gap remains regarding the effective development, evaluatation, and sustainment of research partnerships; particularly those supporting marginalized populations such as sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY). There is a concomitant need to expand research internationally to cross-culturally conceptualize SGMY’s experiences, which information and communication technologies (ICTs) may facilitate. The International Partnership for Queer Youth Resilience (INQYR) is a research consortium comprising over 40 academic and community representatives investigating and addressing issues faced by SGMY in Canada, the United Kingdom (UK), United States of America (USA), and Mexico from an interdisciplinary perspective by: (a) conducting and disseminating interventions and exploratory research on SGMY’s ICT use, and (b) training cohorts of SGMY scholars and practitioners. This article details INQYR’s rationale and formation, including its objectives and organizational framework. Facilitators and barriers are discussed through reflection on INQYR’s first operational phase from 2018-2021, considering collaboration with diverse stakeholders and settings; shared goals; language and technology barriers; personal and workload barriers; infrastructure; and power and historical tensions. Implications for other research partnerships and concrete tools such as author guidelines for large-scale research partnership formation, operation, and evaluation are discussed