Skip to content

Collaboration

Definition

Working together respectfully with others who bring in different perspectives. This encompasses both working together with affected communities, as well as with experts in different (academic) fields and circles than you are. This includes building a trusting connection with communities affected by the research you are doing. Communities can either be directly (publishing sensitive materials open-access) or indirectly (they are source groups mentioned in archival sources) impacted. The relationship needs to center the community’s needs and well-being, and their expertise should be valued and recompensated.

Definition source: Combatting Bias definition (in conversation with Margo Groenewoud and HDSC); DE-BIAS (2024), Community Engagement Recommendations.

Stakes

part of: opacity

related to: multivocality

Collaboration in any form is crucial in creating ethically responsible datasets. Not allowing for other perspectives on your work produces tunnel-visioned, and often incorrect work.

Where does it occur in the lifecycle?

1 - Set up

Questions to consider throughout your work

  • In what way could you work with affected communities?
  • In what way could you collaborate with specialist academics/researchers to mitigate potential biases in your research?

Examples

Good-better-best practices

Good Better Best
Reach out to scholars with domain expertise from countries of origin, to ask for feedback and/or help. Collaborate not only across domains and/or academic/public divide, but also skills - e.g. data managers with researchers and community managers etc. Guide yourself with the CARE principles
Expectation management: set realistic goals and communicate these with communities. Explain in project plan / documentation why the chosen partners and collaborators were chosen.1 Ensure collaborators carry ownership of the project, in name, funding, and/or decentralising knowledge creation and storage.
Use your research/institution/funding to give the narratives and voices of the communities a platform. “Organize focus groups with community members and incorporate feedback into archival description.”2 Make community stakeholders partners in your research.3
Have a clear ask and what you can offer to your collaborators. Make explicit what you bring to the table, and in turn, make the other party feel valued in their knowledge as well. Understand that collaboration and codesign is often indefinite as it is relation building - commit to this process.
Know your collaborators: what are their stories, painpoints, and needs? Come prepared - the onus should not be (completely) on the communities to educate us about their contexts.4

Resources

  1. Adapted from DE-BIAS, A Community Engagement Methodology: resources, reflections, recommendations (2024). ↩

  2. Taken from Archives for Black Lives, Anti-Racist Description Resources (2019), p. 6. ↩

  3. Adapted from DE-BIAS, D2.2 Community Interactions: Scenarios and Results (2024). ↩

  4. From a conversation with Shikha Sethia. ↩