Naomi Nichols, Kaitlin Schwan and Jayne Malenfant

We have spent much of our academic and professional careers participating in and leading initiatives that are trying to change how organisations, institutions and systems function. The relentless demands of this work mean there is often little opportunity to reflect on the efficacy of our efforts. To address this gap, we conducted more than two years of ethnographic research to learn how community-university-policy partnerships use research and strategic communication to change how youth homelessness is addressed on a pan-Canadian scale. Our intention was to improve our own tactical efforts to ensure our research contributes to the types of changes we want to see (e.g. an end to youth poverty and homelessness).

We learned that networked knowledge exchange is central to ensuring research-to-policy impact.

In this blog post, we suggest three things researchers can do to produce research that addresses persistent social problems.

Continue reading →