“What Went Wrong?"
Reflecting and Learning from Community-Engaged Research

Members of the Twin Cities metropolitan area (Minneapolis & St. Paul, MN) in conjunction with the University of Minnesota are convening the first ever “What Went Wrong?” conference from July 11-12, 2014, dedicated to understanding and enhancing community-engaged research practices.

The “What Went Wrong?” conference will provide a space for those working for social justice to come together in active dialogue about what it means for communities and universities to practice deeply engaged research that is reflexive, questions power dynamics, and works toward shifts in practice. We will unpack our interests, our values, and our ways of knowing to encourage honest collaboration and relevant research. We will seek to disrupt traditional ways of viewing community/university partnerships and power dynamics. We will directly address individual and collective motives and benefits that partners seek from collaboration and the ways these can both expand and limit possibilities. By highlighting our failures, we will analyze the complex conditions that surround engaged research. We will question the ways in which collaborative research for social justice can reinforce the status quo of unequal power dynamics. Finally, the conference will serve as a resource for community members, organizations, youth researchers, graduate students, and university faculty who are interested in developing critical community-engaged research partnerships.

The “What Went Wrong?” conference is a participatory event. This call for proposals invites you to share the knowledge, wisdom, and experience that have come from “failure.”

Proposals must be submitted online using this Proposal Submission Form (a printable form can also be found on this same page). UPDATE: Proposals are due by April 14,2014 at 5pm. More information about the conference can be found here. See the attached flyer for more information.