Sharing Research Findings and Learning from Each Other: Knowledge Exchange and Public Access | Border Criminologies

"British universities, like their counterparts around the world, are subject to shifting fashions and ideas of research and education. Recently, we have been urged to engage in ‘Knowledge Exchange’ and to make our research findings freely available through a variety of forms of ‘open access.’ Universities, we are told, must engage more with the public ... Indeed, for a discipline like criminology, this aspect of our work has long been considered ethically problematic. Given that we typically require research access from those whose policies and actions we critique, sharing results and exchanging knowledge can be difficult. Too much frankness might endanger the project as a whole. Too little renders much of the work pointless.  Knowledge exchange also raises ethical questions. Part of the audience of much research is likely to be those with whom we are urged to ‘exchange knowledge.’ At what point, in a knowledge-exchange project, might we become implicated in coercive state policies? What about those who are vulnerable? Are we exchanging knowledge with them? How, under the requirements of open access, should we best ‘protect’ them? Does a potentially wider readership exacerbate their vulnerabilities? ... In the field of knowledge exchange, we have also been active, creating a research methods course on ‘Knowledge Exchange in Custodial Research.’ Taught by Oxford faculty working alongside practitioners from a range of government, private, and non-governmental sectors, the course seeks to understand the changing nature of custodial sites and the varying needs and barriers to academic research. Funded by the University of Oxford Social Science Doctoral Training Centre, this series of six seminars will be open to any UK doctoral students who wish to attend ..."