What lies beyond participatory methodology: reflections on power, resources, and knowledge-making among practitioners, researchers, and funders

Participatory action research (PAR) has long been the preferred methodology for facilitating inclusive research processes that seek to dismantle the ivory tower that has typically characterised academic research. In an ideal scenario, participatory action research is a useful transformative tool that integrates practitioners’ advocacy-needs with scientific evidence in accountable and reflexive ways. However, PAR has often been instrumentalised to meet the sometimes-arbitrary requirements of research calls and donor-funded agendas – with the effect of dulling the potentially transformative power of meaningful co-created research processes. The reasons for these shortcomings are complex but can sometimes include a) the lack of participatory design in funding calls for academia-practitioner research opportunities, b) the resource and time intensiveness of co-creative action-oriented research, and c) the seen and unseen power differentials that exist among diverse actors (funders, academics, formal civil society and activists) that undermine the transformative potential of such collaborations. This reflection piece attempts to unpack these dynamics, informed by the experiences of the author and available literature. Drawing from feminist and emancipatory PAR, the paper presents a set of recommendations for how to overcome the challenges that surface when moving from instrumental PAR to transformative PAR – with the goal of enhancing the co-creation agenda to the benefit of decolonial and gender-equitable outcomes