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Session Type: Roundtable

Theme: 4. Seeing from the Neighbourhood: States, Communities and Human Mobility

Rethinking Community-engaged Approaches II: Principles, Methods, and Tools

Monday, July 29, 2024
16:15 – 18:00 (GMT+7)
Location: Post Graduate School Building, P2.01

Roundtable Abstract: Why do we conduct community engagement in our academic life and as a basis for policymaking? The term ‘community engagement’ is widely used in academic and policymaking realms, but the conceptualization and the application of community engagement vary. Community-engagement generally refers to a spectrum of approaches and commitments and a range of applications that are relevant and sensitive to community well-being and that promote the active involvement of community groups and organizations in collaboration with researchers and planners. Community engagement has attracted a range of criticisms, which include furthering power inequalities between researchers and research subjects; objectification of community groups; perpetuation of local social inequalities by relying on elites to provide access; and others. Amidst such criticisms, community-engaged research is facing continuous resistance, which might also accelerate more broad-based resistance towards this participatory approach. Therefore, community engagement requires deeper thinking and insights about both its conceptual and practical dimensions to enable it to be a meaningful approach. Essential questions for practitioners of community engagement are: Why do we conduct community engagement in research, teaching, and other aspects of academia, as well as in policymaking? What are the principles of community engagement? What are its effective methods? In this roundtable discussion, panelists will be asked to reflect on their own experiences in using community-engaged methods and how they learn these methods. Panelists will also reflect on the advantages and challenges of this approach, and what needs to be done for more meaningful community-engaged academic endeavors—both in research and policymaking—in the future. Panelists will include principal investigators from all Southeast Asia Neighborhoods Network (SEANNET) teams as well as principal investigators from selected River Cities Network (RCN) teams that are applying community engagement techniques in their RCN projects. There will be an open call for RCN panelists, which will be disseminated in late-2023.

Roundtable sponsored by: Southeast Asia Neighborhoods Network (SEANNET) and River Cities Network (RCN), IIAS