WORKING ON WICKED PROBLEMS. A STRENGTHS-BASED APPROACH TO RESEARCH ENGAGEMENT AND IMPACT

1. Aiming for Relevance: Early Experiences of Community Engagement in Ghana
2. Understanding the Context: The Case of Central Australian Aboriginal Health
3. Learning by Doing: Community Action Against Sex, Alcohol and Violence in Tennant Creek
4. Building Capacity for Research: The Lowitja Institute
5. Developing Self-awareness as a Researcher: The Family Wellbeing Program
6. Facilitating Empowerment: The Family Wellbeing Program in Alice Springs
7. Building Readiness for Change: The Case of Yarrabah Men’s Group
8. Taking a Long-term Approach: The Family Wellbeing Program in Yarrabah
9. Managing Unanticipated Consequences: Historical Research in Ghana
10. Planning for and Tracking Research Impact: Australian Research Council Framework
11. Conclusion: A Strengths-based Framework for Research Engagement and Impact.

This book is for researchers and students looking for ways to engage communities and industry in research. It is also written for community leaders, philanthropists and managers of organisations interested in building mutually beneficial partnerships with researchers, or training their own researchers. To this end, I hope that the readers of this book will appreciate that in their own way, whether big or small, they will be able to make research more meaningful by genuinely and honestly engaging with the communities of people with whom they work.I hope that an auto-ethnography or personal narrative approach will throw light on the factors that lead to positive research engagement and impact, thereby helping researchers avoid some of my pitfalls.