About
The Co-Pro Futures Inquiry aims to identify practical sector-wide and institutional changes that can improve the conditions for co-produced and participatory research within UK universities and the Higher Education (HE) sector.
Between 2024-2026, it will involve workshops, interviews, a public Call for Evidence and Ideas, desk-based secondary analysis, and a high profile panel drawn from the higher education sector who will identify actions that can be put into practice. The process is overseen by our Community Reference Group. This will culminate in the launch of our action plan in July 2026.
Why we're doing this
There has been a growing emphasis on interactive approaches to knowledge exchange and a recognition of the need to consider wider research cultures - specifically, how research is produced, with whom, and for whom. This has moved co-production and participatory research from the margins to the mainstream.
Despite this positive progress, there is still more work to do. Participatory researchers sometimes end up doing their work 'despite not because of' the university.
We need a sector-wide reflection on what universities, funders, and policy-makers need to do to support this effectively.
We are doing this through six stages.
Where next?
Who's involvedThe Inquiry is built around four cross-cutting themes, which we use to look across the evidence and ideas we generate
Fair funding
Funding arrangements can make genuine partnerships within co-produced research projects harder to achieve at both the design and delivery stages. For instance, there may be rules prohibiting how partners can be paid. University systems may be inflexible or not take the tight cash flows of smaller, voluntary organisations into account.
Equitable partnerships
Contracts or intellectual property rules and regulations can also undermine the ideal of equal partnerships. For instance, legal terminology can be difficult to understand, introduce transactional logics around providing services, or force partners to give away credit for jointly developed work.
Responsible metrics
Many researchers feel that co-produced and participatory work is often not as highly valued or rewarded, even though it is increasingly encouraged by funders. The continued prioritisation of certain kinds of outputs over others can disincentivise participatory researchers and is especially challenging for those at the early career stage.
Negotiated ethics
Ethical reviews tend to be static and can often reaffirm traditional boundaries between researchers and 'researched'. One-off ethical approvals do not help researchers negotiate the ethical complexities of sustained, deep-value relationships required for co-producing research.
The Inquiry is funded by Research England Participatory Research Funds, and is co-led by Professor Catherine Durose (Heseltine Institute at the University of Liverpool) Professor Liz Richardson (Department of Politics at the University of Manchester) and Professor Beth Perry (Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield).
