The issue of collaboration between researchers and social movements is dramatically back in the spotlight, both in the academic and in the public debate. In the face of global challenges that demand profound social and environmental transformation, researchers are increasingly encouraged to maximize the transformative impact of their work by responding to societal needs and by involving social actors in the design and development of innovative solutions. Yet, when it comes to collaboration with social movements, researchers often adopt cautious and ambivalent approaches. On the one hand, collaboration is described exclusively as a monolithic commitment, without taking into account the different forms these relationships can take; on the other hand, movements are involved only intermittently and largely according to researchers’ agendas. These approaches leave little space to acknowledge the needs, expectations and perspectives of both researchers and movement members, or to explore how knowledge can be genuinely co-constructed and shared. In this context, the long-standing experience of collaboration between South African researchers and social movements offers particularly valuable insights. In South Africa, collaboration emerged within the anti-apartheid struggle and developed through continuous dialogue that led to pioneering action-research projects in the post-apartheid era, which remain central to South African transformative research praxis. Over time, researchers and movements have built close, everyday relationships shaped by conflict, negotiation and frequent interaction, grounded in mutual learning and creative experimentation. Although often contentious, these relationships have enabled forms of collaboration based on the shared identification of generative themes, plural interpretations of social problems and multi-voiced knowledge production.
By adopting an ethnographic, participatory and action research approach, TiR aims to examine how day-to-day relationships between researchers and social movements were constructed during and after apartheid (from 1980 to the present), and how these relationships shaped distinctive forms of collaboration in South Africa. By translating key elements of the South African experience into ethical and methodological guidelines co-produced by researchers and movements, and by discussing these guidelines with the Italian academic community and social movements, the project seeks to innovate transformative research praxis in Europe and beyond.
TiR pursues four main objectives: (1) to reconstruct debates on researcher–movement collaboration within both social movements and universities from 1980 to the present in Nelson Mandela Bay; (2) to build a Repository of Transformative Research Practices collecting projects, methods and collaboration practices developed jointly by researchers and movements; (3) to formulate innovative Methodological and Ethical Guidelines for Transformative Research through a collaborative writing process, translating South African experience into transferable knowledge; and (4) to foster dialogue on researcher–movement collaboration in transformative research in Italy and Europe.
At NMU and UNITO, TiR will have an impact on researchers, students and members of movements, by making them reflect on their own experiences, which in turn will improve their relationship strategies and dialogue. In addition, the university institutions (research ethics committees, governance bodies), will be called upon to consider aspects of the relation between researchers and movements that are now neglected, and this will lead to rethink their public engagement activities and strategies; beside the NMU and UNITO academic community, the project will have an impact on citizens in South Africa, Italy and beyond, who will improve their knowledge of transformative research activities, and of the role that civil society can play in research projects, consequently their trust in science will increase. Reflection on how researchers and movements can work together will also help policymakers and members of local government to improve their relations with both these stakeholders.
