Fostering research collaborations at the Graduate and Postgraduate levels

Whether your research falls under the humanities, public health, education, or another field, strong relationships with non-academic partners are key to creating positive change. By considering when and how to collaborate throughout the life of the research project, researchers at any career stage can lay the groundwork to make effective societal contributions. This interactive workshop, designed for graduate students and postdocs, will prompt participants to reflect on their approaches to collaboration and suggest strategies for approaching, building, and sustaining respectful relationships with non-academic partners throughout the research cycle.

SPEAKERS AND FACILITATORS

This event will be facilitated by Dr. Erica Machulak. Erica is a Knowledge Exchange Specialist in the Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation. She draws on background in grant development, her experience as a writer for the National Endowment for the Humanities, and her PhD in medieval English literature to think broadly about communication and partnership strategies in an interdisciplinary context.

Participants will hear from experts and learn strategies to build and sustain effective research partnerships. Dr. Omar Swei will share his experiences in research partnerships as a graduate student and postdoc at MIT, and now as an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at UBC. A panel of representatives from non-academic partner organizations (participants TBC) will share insights from their experiences working with researchers in a wide range of contexts

KT PATHWAYS TOOL

We are pleased to offer participants the opportunity to use the KT Pathways tool (https://ktpathways.ca/) to reflect on their confidence in knowledge exchange-related skills and provide information that will shape the workshop’s content. Please complete the recommended components of this tool by Wednesday, February 19, so that we can take your responses into account for workshop planning.

Instructions for using the KT Pathways tool:

Go to https://ktpathways.ca/

1. Create a profile at the link above, using UBC as your organization.
2. After creating the profile, update the organization to “Knowledge Exchange Unit Workshop (Feb 26) – UBC” by clicking on the profile tab (top right) and selecting “edit profile.”
3. Be sure to click “save.”
4. Select the “Knowledge Producer” track, and complete the multiple choice questions under “Research to Action” and “Bringing People Together.” Combined, these will take approximately 20-30 mins.

This workshop is presented by the UBC Knowledge Exchange Unit (Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation) with support from the Public Scholars Initiative, the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, and the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Centre. 

REGISTRATION

Registration in this session is required and is now open. Please note that filling this form is only the first step of the registration; workshop application will only be finalized once participants have completed the KT Pathways Tool survey in the text above.