A model for knowledge mobilisation and implications for the education of social researchers

The growing imperative for social sciences to apply more directly to the communities they study raises issues about how researchers develop their capabilities to interact with people in such communities throughout their career. A traditional model sees researcher education focus on challenges that matter primarily within their university: the mastery of methods and production of research papers. If social research is to be more relevant outside the academy, then how are social researchers to be prepared for this challenge? The underlying proposition of this paper is that publishing academic research is merely work in progress towards the realisation of some challenge held to be of wider interest within society. However, pursuing such an outcome will require a reorientation of programmes of researcher education to consider the practices of user engagement. In this paper, we reflect upon the development of our own practice of user engagement within the context of management studies. We develop our argument by conceptualising the process of knowledge mobilisation as a series of stages in which knowledge translates into practice. We suggest that academic researchers contribute only one of the inputs to this translation process, with other inputs being provided by users who are in some manner involved in the research. We discuss the implications of this model for researcher education throughout academic careers as well as for explaining the research to users who are part of the process of translating knowledge into practice. We illustrate our arguments by drawing on data generated whilst undertaking a review of the UK's Economic and Social Research Council research training recognition; our experience of designing and delivering university researcher workshops in user engagement; and the reflections of one PhD researcher conducted at various stages in her research project, including interaction with various stakeholders with whom she had to engage.