Co-Producing Knowledge, Pluralising Policy Imaginaries for Sustainable and Healthy Food Systems

In recent years, a ‘cognitive turn’ has become increasingly important in configuring research and policy for sustainability. Concepts such as ‘knowledge transfer’ and ‘knowledge exchange’ signify a shift towards ‘impactful’ research that would bring research closer to policy and would, thus, make ‘a demonstrable contribution to society and the economy’ (RCUK, 2014). This is not unrelated to the broader vision of ‘engaging’ ‘the industry’ and ‘the public’ in configuring research and policy processes and outputs for sustainability (Barry et al, 2008; Viseu 2015). However, in many cases, a narrow approach to ‘knowledge transfer’ and ‘knowledge exchange’ prevails, prioritizing certain knowledges and ‘assum[ing] an unproblematic transfer of knowledge from academics to partners’ (Munro, 2016:45).

However, can we do ‘knowledge transfer’ differently? Whose knowledge is important in configuring ‘impactful’ research and policy for sustainability? And what are the challenges when attempting to emancipate those processes from established knowledge hierarchies and epistemological/methodological trajectories?

This paper aims to address those questions specifically by focusing on the idea of ‘research co-production’ as a framework that aims to pluralize knowledge and impact in research and policy processes. More specifically, I share experiences and findings from the policy research I conducted as part of the UKRI ‘Co-producing healthy, sustainable food systems for disadvantaged communities’: a project that had ‘knowledge co-production’ at its heart – for example, by partnering with community organizations and appointing ‘community researchers’ for co-designing research objectives, methodologies and impact outputs. In this paper, I describe these processes of ‘co-producing knowledge’; I discuss the possibilities they have opened up for pluralizing constructs of ‘sustainability’ and ‘health’ and, thus, policy imaginaries for ‘impact-ful’ food system change. However, I also reflect on challenges of delivering impact through research co-production, raising questions about time and labour as well as power and competition, especially within shrinking public funding landscapes.