Mobilizing and Transferring Knowledge Between Northern Communities and Sentinel North

Effective knowledge transfer and mobilization between researchers and communities means that community-based knowledge must be integrated into research projects and research knowledge must be returned to communities in understandable, useful ways. In addition to commitments on the parts of research teams and funders, specialized skills in community engagement and knowledge transfer and mobilization can help achieve such goals. In this project, researchers, designers, and trainees at Université Laval will work with community members, stakeholders, and youth in Arctic and sub-Arctic communities to optimize knowledge transfer and mobilization methods for research conducted in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. To do this, we will work with Sentinel North leadership to identify 3 to 5 recent or current research projects to form a diverse, representative case study series. We will then conduct interviews with community members, stakeholders, and researchers involved in those projects to determine what works, what doesn’t work, and why certain approaches succeed or fail in knowledge translation and mobilization in such research. After determining what we can learn from recent or current projects, we will then conduct co-design workshops with community members, stakeholders, and researchers to collaboratively design knowledge translation products, strategies, and templates that are acceptable to community members and stakeholders and feasible for research teams to use. Finally, we will work with existing Sentinel North project leaders and community partners to test the effectiveness of the co-designed products, strategies, and templates. This project will offer clear guidance regarding how to engage in knowledge transfer and mobilization in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, and will also build capacity in communication and community-based research.

Éric Kavanagh
Mélanie Lemire
Jacynthe Roberge
Marie-Claude Tremblay