HWW Collaboration Challenge: Best Practices | Humanities Without Walls (HWW)

Collaborative Research Partnerships—Do's & Don'ts:

Clearly discuss everyone's roles and responsibilities from the onset.
Be honest about who you are, what your goals are, and what your limitations may be. Invite all team members and collaborators to do the same.
Develop the research questions, goals, and outcomes with equal input from all research collaborators from the very beginning of project development.
Explicitly discuss what people do *not* want as outcomes and impacts of the research project. Listen carefully for opportunities to get clarification, or offer it.
Work out how everyone would prefer to communicate, at what intervals, and how information will be collected and disseminated across the entire team.
Be mindful of the impact of past engagement with researchers in your field(s), from universities, and from your background on collaborative dynamics. Recognize the inherent power hierarchies that may exist between institutions, communities, and individuals and work to minimize those inequalities.
Build in regular moments to check-in, evaluate, and potentially re-adjust the project.
Explore opportunities to build in training and resource sharing across all partners, including beyond skills explicitly required for the research project.
Find out about, and work within, community organizational structures, protocols, and leaders.
Consider avenues for partnership, redistribution, and reciprocity beyond the life of the grant and be open to opportunities that aren't limited to the topic or methodologies of the project

Don't

Assume expertise only exists within academic spheres and that training would only be happening for non-academic community partners from academics rather than the other direction.
Assume knowledge, aptitude, expertise or interests on the basis of skin color, gender, sexual orientation or self-presentation.
Take for granted that everyone shares the same definitions and expectations around key concepts, practices, and responsibilities (i.e., don’t operate from inside any kind of bubble). Develop these in collaboration during the development of the project.
Rush conversations and decision-making processes in the name of institutional deadlines or the timeline of the grant.
Allow for time to consider and re-consider
Opt out of joint decision-making or feedback processes because of shared positionality/ies with collaborators, previous work with community or topic, or good intent.

Include them as equal partners at every step of the planning and execution process—including as co-authors, co-presenters, and/or co-curators.
Design their roles from the start in proposal planning, linking those roles to the research-based problem as a collaborative partner project.
Prioritize students with underrepresented minority backgrounds and do think strategically about how to design your teamwork so that inclusivity is at work in all aspects of the project.
Consider what content knowledge, expertise and skills students have that can inform the project design; these include research specialty, community engagement experience, and/or digital humanities capabilities.
Develop plans for professional development (training opportunities: anti-racism workshops; grant writing; project management) and mentoring (by a team member or project participant) for them and share opportunities with them as those unfold.
Talk with them about how the project work aligns with their job market planning whether in or outside the academy and link them with relevant campus resources.
Be mindful of how changes to the project timeline or parameters may impact their timelines and progress to degree completion and work to mitigate that impact,

Don't

Build them into the grant only so that they can do their own dissertation research in the shadow of the HWW project.
Limit their participation to only tasks that have no intellectual or substantive links to the project work; i.e., do not treat them as go-fers.
Assume knowledge, aptitude, expertise or interests on the basis of skin color, gender, sexual orientation or self-presentation.
Include students of underrepresented or marginalized backgrounds only as a means to gain access to particular communities, materials, or areas of knowledge.
Assign them responsibilities (such as liaising with partners or other participants) for which they have no context or training.
Reinforce what is often the academic hierarchy of faculty-graduate student in the classroom, the lab or the dissertation process; be mindful of power imbalances in decision-making processes and explicitly invite and allow for equal participation in those processes.