Should researchers act as disruptors?

Learning from the Dutch Academic Collaborative Centres

Posted by Peter van der Graaf, Associate Professor in Public Health & AskFuse Research Manager, and Mandy Cheetham, Research Fellow, from Northumbria University

While Storm Babette was wreaking havoc in the UK, a team of international delegates from Tranzo, scientific centre for care and wellbeing of Tilburg University visited Fuse. The visit focused on sharing learning on how to develop and maintain collaborative research partnerships between policymakers, health practitioners, communities and academic researchers.

Great visit from @TilburgU_Tranzo to the North East yesterday hosted by @fuse_online @gateshead and @EdbertsHouse to share international learning on #collaborative research partnerships between policymakers, health practitioners, communities and researchers. #KMb pic.twitter.com/iTCMggC1hG

— Peter van der Graaf 🇪🇺🇳🇱🇬🇧 (@pvandergraaf75) October 21, 2023

Tranzo works in Academic Collaborative Centres (ACCs),which are sustainable partnerships between Tilburg University researchers and health and care organisations at both a regional and national level, including (local) government, third sector organisations and other research institutes. Tranzo hosts in total 11 ACCs, each with a different topic area: ranging from mental health, addiction, intellectual disability, to public health, youth, work & health, social work, care for older adults, and technological and social innovations for mental health. Each centre could be compared to a research cluster within Fuse and is led by an academic lead.

Despite the diversity in topics addressed in each centre, there are five underlying research themes:

1. health-related behaviour, health care policies and societal influences; 
2. social inequality and inclusivity; 
3. mental health care, capabilities and recovery; 
4. client perspective and participation, experiential expertise, and; 
5. the (health) care system.

We could call these cross-cutting themes, and this is something Fuse could consider to integrate research across clusters. For example, translational research could act as a cross-cutting theme within Fuse.

The ACCs work in a similar way to Fuse: they connect science, lived experience and professional practice in the domain of health and wellbeing in the Netherlands through co-creation of research and knowledge exchange. These diverse sources of knowledge are valued equally. The principles of establishing long-term partnerships, based on equality, personal relationships will also sound familiar to Fuse members.

During the discussions on the day, we reflected on the importance and challenges of blurring boundaries and the need for ‘living bridges’ between partners organisations. Personal and trusted relationships and a commitment to reciprocity were identified as key for this, but also the need for systems that support and incentivise collaborative working. Unfortunately, universities and research funding programmes are often not set up for this way of working, or narrowly confine knowledge exchange to commercial spin-off companies.

Blurring boundaries, science practitioners, and the fourth-generation university

One of the ways in which Tranzo has tried to blur boundaries is by developing science practitioner roles, which are practitioners who take up a temporary post in universities to develop their research skills and act as boundary spanners for the knowledge they co-create within their practice organisations. These roles can be funded by the health and care organisations (in kind), as they recognise the importance of using more evidence to inform their decision making, by blending scientific knowledge with the knowledge and expertise from practitioners and service users. But sometimes also external funding (grants) is available for co-creation projects with science practitioners. Sometimes it is a combination of in kind and grant funding.

This makes science practitioners the flip side of embedded researchers in Fuse: instead of academic researchers co-locating temporarily in a practice organisation (for example a public health team in a local authority) practitioners spend time in academia, (partly) paid for by their organisation and supported by academics to develop their own research. Both roles help to blur boundaries and therefore science practitioners, which go beyond short-term placements, could be a valuable role to consider for Fuse.

To support this two-way traffic between researchers and practitioners, Tranzo has defined itself as a ‘developing towards a fourth-generation university’: an open network university reaching out and working on innovation with partners and citizens in an ecosystem. While first generation universities are focused on education and second generation universities combine education with research, third generation universities embrace entrepreneurship and try to market their knowledge. However, this happens solely within the space of the university (Steinbuch, 2016).

In contrast, fourth generation universities see themselves as only one space within a wider knowledge eco-system that requires close collaboration with all participants in this eco-system, including policymakers, professionals and service users, but also private organisations, arts and creative industries and international collaborations. Interestingly, the function of senior leaders within fourth generation universities is not to manage processes and structures, but to disrupt them. By disrupting existing practices, ways of thinking, and valuing and using different types of knowledge, more value can be created within the eco-system.

This perspective suggests an extended new role for Fuse: not only trying to be a bridge between different worlds (research and practice) or between different research infrastructures and networks within the North East and North Cumbria - Applied Research Collaboration (ARC), Health Determinants Research Collaborations (HDRCs), and Research Support Service (RSS) - but actively disrupting the status quo by building structures and processes to enable the creation of value through new collaborative partnerships and by stimulating multi-actor innovation.  

The new value that could be created in this way was clearly visible during the two site visits on the day, when we were welcomed by staff and community members at Edberts House and Gateshead Council. Embedded research roles have shone a light in Gateshead on the importance of control for residents, whose lives are often defined by a lack of control and influence over decisions affecting their lives. Research helped them to learn from a community-centred approach and use this learning to inform future planning. Council staff felt more confident and skilled to develop their own research and evaluations and implement solutions using this knowledge and the connections it helped to create with external partners.

It was inspiring to hear from our colleagues in Tranzo and share examples of our collaborative research. We had positive and fruitful exchanges about our experiences, challenges and shared interests including training in the craft of knowledge exchange, mentoring, engagement and impact. We look forward to continuing the conversations and would be interested in any readers' thoughts on how we can be more disruptive as Fuse researchers?

The view from Tranzo

Reflections from Prof. Dr. Ien van de Goor, Program leader Academic Collaborative Center Public Health, Tranzo and Tilburg University

On behalf of the Tranzo delegation, first of all many thanks for the very warm welcome on this stormy day in October. We were impressed by the introductions in the morning program on how translational research within Fuse is taking form. There were some very nice examples of how knowledge exchange can help to increase the flow of evidence into public health practice. And how push and pull factors in this process are taken into account in the Fuse knowledge exchange model. It was very interesting to hear about the co-creation process where research was translated in a book for children with parents suffering from addiction problems. As was the report on the relation between the Covid-19 pandemic and health inequities. Both resonated with Tranzo’s way of working: a diversity of themes and different ways of making an effort to do impactful research.  

Next in the afternoon program we were invited to Edberts House and the Gateshead Council. The way the voice of the community is a driving force in making Edberts House into a successful and valued community project, was impressive to experience (as was the lovely lunch offered!).

The program was finalised by meeting with representatives of Gateshead Council. The enthusiasm of the members from the Council's Public Health team and the Fuse researchers was striking and made clear that direct collaboration and co-creation between academic research and local authorities can contribute significantly to the uptake of evidence in public health policy and practice.

So for Tranzo it was a very insightful and inspiring visit learning about Fuse collaborating with practice and sharing our ways of working and trying to be impactful with scientific research. We really look forward to exploring further opportunities to collaborate, co-create and share our thoughts on finding ways to be disruptive (for the better!)