Power, knowledge and social change: Community-engaged research in response to civic power and a health crisis

Amongst the resources that can foster public life, those that offer the means for collective action and social renewal, community-engaged research (CER) is a powerful bulwark against contemporary forms of deprivation and crisis. Community-engaged research is a critical form of research generation through which theory and academic knowledge are incorporated with the world and in collaboration with communities, to understand, analyze and reimagine the conditions governing our lives. In this paper an institutional example of CER is shared to highlight the potential of community-centred research to operate as a space for world-building in support of training, collaboration, and research leadership, along with two projects that suggest the potential of CER to address some of the most intractable matters of concern that affect societies today.