Partnerships in higher education (HE) across international locations can take many forms. They are also continually evolving in different political economic situations and across diverse cultures where education takes place. Therefore, how partnerships are integrated into different HE systems and operations differs by both frameworks and place (Amey & Eddy, 2023). Additionally, in our hybrid lives in postdigital society, where our technologies cannot be separated from human labour, academic centres cannot be looked at in isolation from their margins (Jandrić, P. & Hayes 2019: 381).

In this paper we examine a particular form of partnership that universities now refer to as knowledge exchange or knowledge transfer and its enactment for building cross-sector approaches to address complex societal challenges in our postdigital era (Knox, 2019: 357). Knowledge exchange (KE) tends to be thought of as a collaborative process that turns research into practical outcomes, fosters partnerships between universities and external organisations, often to generate commercial, environmental, and cultural benefits. However, an emphasis within HE on forming KE partnerships as a genericprocess within a framework can overlook how these exchanges in knowledge are experienced individually by external partners, as they engage with universities.

So we ask as our research question: how do diverse citizen researchers who are based outside of universitiesidentify themselves and their experiences of KE partnerships?

Citizen sciences, citizen social sciences and citizen humanities represent transformative communities of practice that are redefining research and research partnership in the postdigital era (Jandrić & Hayes, 2019, Harding, 2008, Bazzul, 2019). Yet, whilst much global research takes place in universities, many researchers in the sciences and humanities do not work within these institutions.  As such, there is a need to be open to where institutional policies and practices may stifle innovative, cross-sector research alliances that could help address pressing global issues (Hayes, et. al., 2024).

Now that many universities count KE partnerships as a key part of their activities, linked to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is important to examine what may prevent equitable research collaborations. Our paper shares findings from a co-created, in-person meeting with a diverse group of citizen researchers in Zagreb in 2024. This is part of a larger ongoing collaborative inquiry into the role of citizen research in postdigital society.  Our international academic team first mapped existing literature in the field (Jandrić et al. 2023) and then explored the various aspects of postdigital citizen science using the metaphor of a kaleidoscope (Jopling et al. 2024).

Our findings bring something of a provocation to all knowledge-producing institutions via the recommendations that emerged from our Zagreb workshop. Citizen researchers include enthusiasts, activists, and community members who collaborate across institutional, disciplinary, and geographical boundaries to pursue research that matters to them, often contributing valuable data to local or global health or environmental sustainability research. Others run their own companies, work in third sector organisations or provide independent consultancy. Often they have left roles in universities through a conflict of values, or other situations where they have experienced hostile, hierarchical, or restrictive practices (Watermeyer, et. al., 2024)

There is therefore now a pressing need to review institutional policies and practices around citizen research partnerships, towards more inclusive KE partnerships, if we are to collaborate successfully to address many global challenges. The role of universities in charting the way forward is called into question if the research potentials and perspectives of their community partners are not recognised. Institutions therefore need to adopt more creative and equitable approaches to partnerships that include the marginal voices of researchers of many kinds, who are based outside of universities (Jandrić and Hayes 2019).

Our participatory citizen research workshop in Zagreb, Croatia, was seed funded by Bath Spa University, UK, in order to surface experiences of citizen researchers on themes that emerged through our background research (Jandrić et al. 2023, Tolbert, et.al, 2024, Jopling, et. al, 2024). Our international research team had been writing about the postdigital nature of citizen science and humanities but had not directly explored the opinions of citizen researchers. There is a tendency in universities to label citizen participants in research as ‘citizen scientists’ or ‘non-academics’. However, in postdigital society, research in citizen science and humanities is intertwined around social, ecological, and scientific issues that also include digital and data disadvantages in an age of artificial intelligence (AI) (Hayes et. al, 2023). We wanted to hear how diverse citizen researchers identify themselves, and to grow a collective dialogue on their experiences of KE partnerships. The workshop was planned and co-led by Sarah Hayes, Petar Jandrić, Linda la Velle, and Sarah Earle. Petar identified participants through popular media outlets and via personal contacts and word of mouth. Following ethical approval, a few slides were developed to open the discussions. Taking into account potential language barriers, a visual approach with some simple prompts was taken, to get conversations started. The group were asked where they would place their activities in relation to technology, human (people), or postdigital, hybrid activities, in relation to humanities or sciences, and which organisations they had partnerships with. Participants were asked to comment on where they may input into each stage of a traditional research cycle: 1) Concept 2) Process 3) Participants/Sites 4) Data Collection 5) Analysis/Interpretation and 6) Co-publishing and Co-presenting. From the outset the research team were co-participants in the workshop to address potential hierarchy or power dynamics and aid the flow of conversation. Everyone present (convenors and participants) signed an ethics consent form at the start. Themes that emerged from our workshop included: power dynamics within KE relationships, labelling by universities that differs from citizen researchers’ own identities, pessimism and disempowerment in partnerships. All agreed that there are issues of fairness and reciprocity in KE and research partnerships such as: who is doing the outreach, not being allocated equitable funding and payment for time, or having affiliation to an institution for research outside of academia, problems of dissemination, poor access to conference funding and getting published in academia (too slow and exclusive).

Postdigital citizen science, social science and humanities research is an emerging field with challenges and opportunities that arise from working at geographical, institutional and disciplinary margins. The dominance of corporate and institutional interests centered in traditional research hubs has limited our collective capacity to address pressing socio-ecological challenges. Cross-national and cross-sector innovations offer crucial alternatives by enabling community researchers to document, analyze, and respond to urgent local and global issues from perspectives often overlooked by mainstream research institutions. Citizen researchers counter restrictive and unequal HE partnerships with digital media tools, to immediately broadcast their data to press agencies and disseminate through open online databases. These are alternatives to the traditional academic article, where evidence quickly demonstrates the need for action. Thus, science in the service of humanity was contrasted with restrictive disciplinary divisions in universities. Recommended actions to inform more equitable HE partnerships included: Avoid referring to ‘non-academic’ actors, review how community, citizens, and research are referred to in funding calls and academic publications, examine where citizen researchers might collaborate at all methodological stages of a project, rapidly report outcomes of research in more accessible language, recognise that new opportunities opened via postdigital perspectives have changed the nature of research collaboration and engagement, adapt HE processes to enable agile partnerships that connect with community research issues, rather than presenting topics to citizens and asking them to gather data alone. This study illuminates how postdigital citizen science, social science and humanities practitioners are transforming traditional research paradigms and notions of marginal positionality through bottom-up innovation. By leveraging digital tools and collaborative networks, citizen researchers challenge institutional power structures and generate new forms of participatory knowledge production that responds to local community needs and ecological challenges. Our co-authored citizen research paper shares the collective dialogue of all participants (Hayes, et. al, 2024).

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