DESCRIPTION

While historically the term 'co-production' referred to 'professionals and community members working together to improve public services' (McMellon et al., 2024, 807), in a research context, it refers to processes in which researchers collaborate with individuals, communities or organisations outside academia to conduct research that draws on and recognises the value of the lived, embodied, culturally-situated and/or professional knowledges those individuals hold. This usage and understanding of the term is especially prevalent in a UK context (Barke et al., 2020, 169); in disciplinary terms, co-production is predominantly used in the arts, humanities and social sciences as well as adjacent fields such as public health.

The principles of co-production intersect with a wide range of participatory methodologies, including Participatory Action Research (PAR), Research-Practice Partnerships (RPPs) and Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR). Co-production proceeds from the need to 'move away from research that treats participants as objects of study' (Aldridge, 2015, 4-5) to instead recognise and engage with participants' expertise and invite them to exercise agency and voice in knowledge creation. Participants in co-produced research are hence referred to as 'co-researchers'. Co-productive approaches seek to engage forms of knowledge that are typically dismissed or overwritten by conventional research, including the 'embodied, emotional and tacit ways of knowing' (Bell & Pahl, 2018, 106) held by marginalised individuals and groups. Such approaches prompt a reconsideration of both 'what counts as knowledge and whose knowledge counts' (Phillips et al., 2022, 392), unsettling existing knowledge hierarchies and seeking departure from the extractivism which can see disempowered communities 'used' for research in ways that perpetuate existing inequalities. As a consequence, researchers engaged in co-production often emphasise its potential for decolonising research (e.g. Selim & Waite, 2023, 38).

How does co-production operate in practice? Martin (2010) identifies five 'levels' of co-production, from treating non-academic partners as informants to including them at all stages of the research process. The latter involves collaborating with co-researchers from the initial identification of research questions, through the selection of methods, creation and analysis of data, production of outputs and dissemination of results. While in practice, projects described as employing 'co-production' may not involve collaboration at all of these stages, work that involves collaboration from the outset onwards is usually considered ideal (Smith & Wool, 2025, 5). Co-production projects use a variety of methods, often moving beyond text-based research methods, which Beebeejaun et al. consider exclusionary and potentially disempowering (2014, 41). Instead, led by the interests and needs of co-researchers, projects frequently use visual methodologies (e.g. participatory mapping, photovoice), oral methodologies such as storytelling, and arts-based methodologies such as theatre and filmmaking (Selim & Waite, 2023, 17). Rowley et al. consider arts-based methods valuable in 'enabl[ing] emergent problems to be recognised' (2022, 5), while Phillips et al. note their effectiveness in 'eliciting embodied, aesthetic and emotional/affective ways of knowing' (2022, 393).

Proponents of co-production often stress the importance of co-produced outputs being genuinely co-produced, as opposed to solely created by academic partners. This may involve co-authoring academic outputs with co-researchers, but it may also involve engaging with co-researchers about the kinds of outputs they consider most meaningful. Bell and Pahl note that '[i]t is of vital importance that research produced through co-production is disseminated in forms accessible and useful to those who helped produce it', with the result that methods such as 'podcasts, zines, artworks, films, exhibitions, posters, apps, guided walks, pamphlets and soundwalks' are often used (2018, 110). Selim and White highlight the fact that in engaged research with communities, outputs 'through which to engage policymakers and promote policy-relevant research outputs' are also often important, leading to the dissemination of research via '[p]olicy events, workshops, and press releases' (2023, 34). Considering outcomes in a broader sense, Facer and Enright identify six kinds of legacy of co-production projects, which include people (e.g. through capacity-building), networks, and institutional legacies (2016, 122-4).

Necessitating researchers cede control over the research process, co-production requires a high degree of flexibility. Initial conceptions of the research must be iteratively revised and reconsidered, and a certain amount of ethical, interpersonal and procedural 'mess' is likely to be encountered - and should be transparently reflected in accounts of the research, as Thomas-Hughes (2018) contends. As Groot et al. (2022) note, relational reflexive work is also needed in order to avoid perpetuating existing forms of dominance, exclusion and epistemic injustice. The democratising impetus of co-production is not a given but is dependent on researchers' ongoing commitment to capacity-building with communities and to the dismantling of knowledge hierarchies (Facer & Enright, 2016, 149; Smith & Wool, 2025, 10), as well as their awareness of the potentially stifling impacts of the neoliberal university (Rowley et al., 2022, 1). The forms of openness expressed in co-production hence entail not only openness to a range of knowledges and social actors in research, but also an embracing of the value of vulnerability and unlearning (Aure et al., 2020, 252).

Co-production entails a number of challenges. As Flinders et al. note, '[i]t is time-consuming, ethically complex, emotionally demanding, inherently unstable, [...] subject to competing demands and expectations, and other scholars (journals, funders, and so on) may not even recognise its outputs as representing "real" research' (2016, 266). The emotional and administrative labour it entails may fall disproportionately on women (Oliver et al., 2019, 5) and early career researchers (Barke et al., 2020), exacerbating inequalities within research communities. The open and emergent nature of co-produced projects also lies in friction with institutional and infrastructural mechanisms such as funding processes and ethics review boards, both of which reward fully-articulated, pre-planned proposals (Facer & Enright, 2016, 111; Campbell & Vanderhoven, 2016, 30). The Co-production Futures Report notes a range of additional challenges including lack of recognition in academia of the value of non-traditional research outputs, barriers to the financial compensation of co-researchers, and issues of intellectual property and data ownership (Vince-Myers, 2025), suggesting the need for infrastructural changes to better facilitate co-produced research (Facer & Enright, 2016; Vince-Myers, 2025).

References

Aldridge, J. (2015). Participatory Research: Working with Vulnerable Groups in Research and Practice. Bristol: Policy Press

Aure, M., et al. (2020). 'Vulnerable Spaces of Coproduction: Confronting Predefined Categories through Arts Interventions', Migration Letters, 17(2), 249–256. https://migrationletters.com/index.php/ml/article/view/895/721 [accessed 18/09/25]

Barke, J., et al. (2020). 'Reflections from the Field: Researchers' Experiences of Co-production', Research for All, 4(2). https://doi.org/10.14324/RFA.04.2.03

Beebeejaun, Y. et al. (2014). 'Beyond Text: Exploring Ethos and Method in Co-producing Research with Communities', Community Development Journal, 49(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bst008

Bell, D.M. and Pahl, K. (2018). 'Co-production: Towards a Utopian Approach', International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(1), 105–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2017.1348581

Campbell, H.J. and Vanderhoven, D. (2016). Knowledge That Matters: Realising the Potential of Co-Production. Report. Manchester: N8 Research Partnership. https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/99657/1/Final%20Report%20-%20Co-Production%20-%20%202016-01-20.pdf [accessed 18/09/25]

Facer, K. and Enright, B. (2016). Creating Living Knowledge: The Connected Communities Programme, Community–university Relationships and the Participatory Turn in the Production of Knowledge. Report. Bristol: University of Bristol and AHRC Connected Communities Programme. https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/files/75082783/FINAL_FINAL_CC_Creating_Living_Knowledge_Report.pdf [accessed 18/09/25]

Flinders, M., et al. (2016). 'Politics of Co-production: Risks, Limits and Pollution', Evidence & Policy, 12(2), 261–279. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426415X14412037949967

Groot, B., et al. (2022). 'Relational, Ethically Sound Co-production in Mental Health Care Research: Epistemic Injustice and the Need for an Ethics of Care', Critical Public Health, 32(2), 230–240. https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2020.1770694

Martin, S. (2010). 'Co-production of Social Research: Strategies for Engaged Scholarship', Public Money & Management, 30(4). https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2010.492180

McMellon, C. et al. (2024). 'Reconceptualising Coproduction as Activism Together', Children & Society, 38(3), 804–822. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12788

Oliver, K., et al. (2019). 'The Dark Side of Coproduction: Do the Costs Outweigh the Benefits for Health Research?', Health Research Policy and Systems, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-019-0432-3

Phillips, L., et al. (2022). 'Arts-based Co-production in Participatory Research: Harnessing Creativity in the Tension between Process and Product', Evidence & Policy, 18(2), 391–411. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426421X16445103995426

Rowley, H. et al. (2022). 'Editorial for SI – Critically Exploring Co-production', Qualitative Research Journal, 22(1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-02-2022-148

Selim, G. and Waite, L. (2023). Co-production Research Toolkit. University of Leeds. https://doi.org/10.48785/100/198

Smith, M.D. and Wool, L. (2025). 'The Power of Participation and the Co-Production of Knowledge in Migration Research: A Critical Reflection on Methods', The International Migration Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183251325203

Thomas-Hughes, H. (2018). 'Ethical "Mess" in Co-produced Research: Reflections from a U.K.-based Case Study', International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(2), 231–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2017.1364065

Vince-Myers, B. (2025). The Co-Production Futures Inquiry: Response to the Call for Evidence and Ideas. Report. Sheffield: The University of Sheffield. https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.29598833