Stage 3

PARTNERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Global research is never done in a vacuum. Within high-income settings, prior to submitting a bid to do a piece of work, a project team will need to engage relevant partners/communities including (and especially) in the countries where the research is taking place. During this stage, it is essential to establish positive, equitable and ethical working relationships that can see the project through to fruition. Where funding is involved, these partnerships are established before a grant is secured. These partnerships are essential to support ethical practice in local and global contexts. Ethical global research relies on successful local and global partnerships to anchor and contextualise the project. Often partners are key to ensuring the credibility and translational potential of the project.

Being alert to ethical dilemmas

What will help us establish and sustain a collaborative culture in our partnership?

Supporting considerations:

• What cultural perspectives should be prioritised in determining key partnerships?
• Will the conduct of researchers in partnership be ethical throughout the process?
• Do we have partners with the required expertise and a strong commitment to an ethically driven team project?

Working towards solutions

Place

People

Principles

Precedent

Together determine what a successful research partnership ‘means’ in each of these countries and/or contexts. For example, this will differ depending on whether this country has a long history of research or is it an emerging research context.

Agree co-produced ethical guidelines – draw out case examples to make the guidelines tangible

Discuss how the partnership will meet social responsibilities and societal/cultural expectations as a research partnership.

Seek guidance from colleagues about successful partnerships in this part of the world - what works and what does not?

Talk with potential partners about some of the ethical challenges that you and they have experienced in the past when working with new partners and how you might best prevent these.

Discuss together what will happen if the conduct of researchers and stakeholders breaches ethical expectations at some stage in the process

Identify opportunities for professional development we can involve our partners in. Are there online workshops that we can attend together, for example, webinars in ‘Theories of Change’ that will provide a shared platform for developing our research ideas?

Create a joint Memorandum of Understanding with all partners to help clarify roles, expectations and values

Check that policies ‘home and abroad’ are consistent in relation to memorandum of understanding requirements, shared funding etc.

Share this information amongst partners and discuss with case examples of how this might apply to the current project.