Dr. Garrett Ward Richards, Assistant Professor with the Environmental Policy Institute at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University
One of the most organic ways for academic researchers to engage in knowledge mobilization is to partner with relevant stakeholders from the beginning of a project. Partner organizations who are given the opportunity to set research priorities and genuinely contribute to research design become natural "audiences" for that research, which is more likely to be relevant and influential due to the partnership approach. However, one limitation is that academic research usually happens on a timeline that is too slow to cleanly align with stakeholder priorities, and building research relationships only adds more time. This presentation explores strategies for disrupting typical academic norms to successfully complete short-term partnered research projects, piloted through 5 years of project experimentation conducted by the Environmental Policy Innovation Lab at Memorial University's Grenfell Campus.