Knowledge Co-production Across Borders: A Series of Online Dialogues

Join us on Monday October 20th 2025 for a series of online presentations and dialogues organised in collaboration with one of our initiatives, the Co-Pro Futures Inquiry. The Co-Pro Futures Inquiry is a two-year collective intelligence gathering exercise led by the Universities of Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool which seeks to 'get our own house in order' to improve the conditions for co-produced and participatory research within UK higher education. 

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 Aligned with UI’s 10 year celebrations, these dialogues will dive into the international dimensions of working across borders and specifically, how we can create more supportive conditions and cultures for co-research with marginalised or underserved organisations or groups outside the UK.  

We will hear from UK academics who have experienced challenges or found creative ways to do knowledge co-production across borders. We will also find out how international researchers in Belo Horizonte, Cape Town and Karachi experience working with UK academics in co-produced projects, and whether bypassing them all together produces more equitable outcomes.

Some of the topics for discussion include: 

- Are our processes and practices to support knowledge co-production across borders fit for purpose?

- What structural or cultural changes are needed at the system-level and how might we bring these about?

- What is enabled or exacerbated in working with minoritised groups when "global north" institutions and academics are bypassed entirely - for instance through south-south collaborations? 

- How can we together create collective conditions for “good” co-production according to shared values, when the global political economy of knowledge is increasingly fractured and contested?

Date: Monday 20th October 2025

Where: Online

Timings: 0930-1530 (Panel 1: 0945 / Panel 2: 1130 / Panel 3: 1400)

Speakers 

• Vanesa Castán Broto, Urban Institute, University of Sheffield
• Melanie Lombard, School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield
• Olivia Casagrande, School of Geography and Planning, University of Sheffield
• Tanzil Shafique, School of Architecture and Landscape, University of Sheffield
• Diana Mitlin, African Cities Research Consortium and Global Development Institute, University of Manchester
• Michael Keith, Centre on Migration Policy and Society (www.compas.ox.ac.uk), University of Oxford
• Andreja Zevnik, Department of Politics, University of Manchester
• Ellie Gore, Department of Politics, University of Manchester
• Rike Sitas, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town
• Adam Abdullah, Karachi Urban Lab, IBA Karachi
• Junia Mortimer, Federal University of Minas Gerais (and Urban Studies Foundation International Fellow, Urban Institute)