Beyond Extractivist Practice: the Ethics of Engaged Research with Communities - Research Roundtable

Description

Speakers:

Hannah Crowdy (National Museums Northern Ireland)
Sean O'Connell (Queen's University Belfast)
Anthony Schrag (Queen Margaret University Edinburgh)
Nisha Tandon (ArtsEkta)
Chair: Ali FitzGibbon (Queen's University Belfast)


As researchers and universities seek to contribute to their communities and wider society, there is growing emphasis on collaborative, participatory approaches that make research relevant, responsible, and useful. Yet economic and structural inequalities create ethical challenges around such engagement, particularly when working with communities around their culture and history.

Approaches such as community-based research (CBR) encourage researchers to reflect on how to ensure that research serves the interests of the communities involved, by building reciprocal relationships and democratising knowledge production. Decolonising methodologies, developed by Linda Tuhiwai Smith and others, also seek to rethink the role of the researcher, not as an extractor of data, but as a partner in shared inquiry and social transformation.

Such approaches are often undervalued within academic research structures. Ethical review processes may assume a conventional “researcher–participant” relationship, while institutional frameworks for evaluating research (such as the REF in the UK) can create pressures to prioritise short-term, measurable impacts over truly equitable and ethical partnerships.

This round table discussion at the Centre for Public History at Queen’s University Belfast will explore ethical and non-extractive research practices in community engagement, with a focus on the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector and public history.

The panel brings together experts in community engagement, the cultural sector, and engaged research to reflect on how researchers can avoid replicating extractivist models.

Period	06 Nov 2025
Event type	Other
Location	Belfast, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	Local