Paper short abstract:

This paper considers a dilemma. While research collaboration can contribute to diversifying knowledge production and to promoting different ways of knowledge, it can also become normative and reinforce institutional settings, where global asymmetric economies of knowledge production are played out.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers reflections on a dilemma in “South-North” research collaboration. On the one hand, collaboration is usually expected to contribute to diversifying knowledge production, to promote multiple expressions of knowledge, and to embrace perspectives from different parts of the world. Bringing together scholars from diverse backgrounds can create space for producing new and original questions and findings. On the other hand, the institutional setting of research collaboration can be quite normative in what is considered as academic “output” and depend from what funding institutions expect. Funding rules and regulations can impact research objectives and processes, and requested workflows may privilege specific ways of agenda setting and reporting. While most collaborative research programmes which include “North-South” partnerships aim at lowering global asymmetries of knowledge production, they can become, at the same time, sites where unequal access to funding resources is experienced on an everyday life level and where conflicts over global asymmetric economies of knowledge production are played out. These constellations are not necessarily characterised by only binary North-South relationships, but by multiple power imbalances, which incorporate complex networks of negotiation. This paper asks which practical strategies can contribute to balance these institutional challenges, and it reflects on the limits in how to produce equitable research collaboration. The paper is mainly based on observations and experiences, which I collected in the past seven years as a member of two research programmes (German-Senegalese and Ghanaian-German), for which I was based in Dakar and in Accra.