Defining my level of engagement with change (scholar activism)

Before engaging with the participants for your research, take time to reflect on your motivations for conducting this research and sustaining these interactions.

List and describe them. You can use the following guiding questions:

What events or experiences sparked my motivation on this topic? Why am I engaging with this particular community? 

Now, reflect on how your life story positions and context position you in the research. You can use the following guiding questions:

Which key experiences in your life shape where you are coming from and the way you are aproximating this research?

 Analyse how the place where your research is based influences the extent of your activist practice. There are several categorisations of activist-scholarships. They are based on Borras' (2023) typology. Read them all and position yourself.

 a) Academy-based: you are primarily located in a university or an academic institution. You engage in activist work while maintaining academic roles; therefore, you can influence academic discourse and access to research resources. Nonetheless, you face institutional constraints, depending on the source of funding, financial or independent constraints and pressure for academic rigour and metrics. 

b) Independent research institution: You are based in a non-academic, progressive research institution like a think tank or NGO. Therefore, you can be more politically autonomous and flexible. Nonetheless, sometimes you face the dilemma of being taken to task for producing "grey literature"; there may also be greater funding insecurity, pressure from donors, and challenges in striving for academic and political balance. 

c) Movement-based: Your scholarship came to life while being part of a social movement. Borras (2023) also named this type of scholar activism "organic intellectuals". Knowledge is produced within movements; it is embodied and localised. There are considerable challenges in terms of stability, financial resources, and sometimes recognition. 

Analyse the implications of being in one of the three contexts: 

Which opportunities do you have in this organisation to produce socially relevant content? 

Which constraints do you face? 

How do these opportunities and constraints influence your motivation for research? 

Identify which type of scholarship you want to pursue. How activist would you want it to be? 

Recognise the different variables of scholar engagement and try to reflect on which type of research you want or are already conducting.  These roles are not categorical and can be complementary, and change over time. To explore each role, its opportunities and constraints, explain in more detail and for a comprehensive description, read Borras (2023), specifically Chapters 3 and 4.

Do you want to be an observer, sistematize and theorise about the struggles of a place, community, organisation or context?

Do you want to advocate for the research participants' cause by supporting their agenda?

Do you want to co-create change together with them?  Meaning exchange of knowledge, joint strategies, expansion of ontologies and epistemologies, and building capacities together through research and training?  (Edelman 2009, as cited in Borras, 2023)

Be aware that each type of role has different methodological implications. Co-creation implies participatory research methods that you can explore further in this Toolkit.

Maintain a critical reflection of your work and process by maintaining a frequent reflective writing practice, dialogue with peers, and group reflection. Be aware that scholar-activism entails both scholarly and political rigour in complementary ways, a commitment to societal transformative change and society-relevant knowledge, and it also entails rewards and punishments from academia, society and even the research's participants (Borras, 2023). Critical reflection will help you to be aware of the above three and inhabit these two worlds that, when colliding, can spark the needed change