What does it mean to conduct equitable community engagement?

Aissa Dearing, a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford, received part-funding from the Agile Enabling Fund to conduct fieldwork. In this blog, they share advice on best practises for community engagement.

Equitable community engagement is considered the gold standard among social scientists. For researchers, it’s not just a moral imperative—it’s a pathway to conducting better, more impactful, and ethical research. Many researchers claim to be centering diverse voices and making their research outputs accessible, but equitable engagement of communities means more than just an exercise in representation. True equitable engagement requires a willingness to be agile, allowing community anchor partners that have a reciprocal interest in your project to shift your research priorities, your methodologies, and possible outputs in alignment with their needs. After conducting several months of fieldwork in deep partnership with community anchors and supported by the Agile Initiative, I’d like to share some of the critical lessons drawn from my relationship with Help for Landowners, the Center for Heirs Property Preservation, and the Great Plains Action Society.

1. Reflect on your identity and assumptions before shaping the research outline

Before setting out to conduct research in any context, consider your pre-existing relationships to the topic and in the area. Consider the following questions as your plan out your research.

• What draws you to this particular research topic or community?
• What assumptions might you be bringing into the process?
• How might your identity, privilege, or access to resources influence the research dynamic?

Engaging in this exercise ensures that your research design is informed by a nuanced understanding of your role and your responsibilities. It also helps clarify whether you are the right person to lead the work or whether someone closer to the community should take the lead.

2. Identify core community anchor partners that have a mutual interest in conducting the research or utilising the research outputs

True equity begins with making central the voices of community anchor partners—organisations or leaders with deep connections to the community. These partners should share a mutual interest in the research or in utilizing its outputs for their own goals. Their involvement cannot be superficial or transactional. To be transformational requires the community partners to be actively involved at every step of the research process, from framing the questions to interpreting the data and disseminating the results. This will likely require extra time and capacity to reach a consensus.

Partners like Help for Landowners have taught me how research questions could be reframed to align with their goals of serving historically marginalised land stewards to earn sustainable revenue resources. This ensured the work was truly relevant to the communities it aimed to serve.

3. Make any engagement events as accessible as possible

To build trust and ensure meaningful participation, accessibility must be a cornerstone of every engagement event. Consider the following strategies:

• Location: Choose venues that are familiar and comfortable for community members. Ensure any location is in proximity to public transit and has accommodations for differently abled individuals.
• Food and Transit Stipends: Provide catering accommodating all dietary needs and transit stipends to ensure participants have an incentive to attend, without any financial barriers to participate.
• Timing: Schedule events at times that accommodate working individuals, caregivers, and others with diverse responsibilities.
• Childcare: Consider making events child-friendly or hiring a childcare service that can watch children of participants during the event.
• Language: Provide materials and interpretation in languages used by the community.
• Format: Incorporate diverse ways of sharing and gathering information, from verbal storytelling to visual tools.

Accessibility is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach—it’s about meeting people where they are and minimizing barriers to participation.

4. Compensate

Communities are often asked to contribute their time, knowledge, and emotional labour to research projects without fair compensation. This reinforces extractive practices that perpetuate inequity. Compensation can take various forms, including:

• Direct payment for participation in interviews, focus groups, or advisory roles (where possible under the terms of funding).
• Providing resources, tools, or training that directly benefit the community.
• Offering research outputs in formats that are actionable and useful for their work. Consider including community anchor partners as co-authors.

Equitable compensation demonstrates respect and acknowledges the value of community members’ contributions.

5. Don’t forget to follow up!

Far too often, researchers disappear after collecting data, leaving communities wondering what became of the research or how it benefits them. Equitable engagement requires sustained relationships, even after the project ends. This may prove difficult for research that is funded on a particular timeline.

Follow-up actions might include:

• Securing funding to continue follow-up engagement.
• Sharing findings in accessible and digestible formats.
• Collaborating with community partners to identify next steps based on the research.
• Staying connected to provide ongoing support or updates.
• Handing over relationships to similar research programmes that could further support the community partner.

The Great Plains Action Society emphasized this point, noting how impactful it is when researchers return to share results and continue the relationship beyond the formal project timeline with their ongoing work on carbon capture and storage resistance.

Equitable community engagement is not a single step or phase of the research process—it’s an ongoing commitment to partnership, accountability, and adaptability. It requires researchers to question traditional power dynamics and to co-create knowledge in ways that benefit everyone involved. By centering the needs, voices, and expertise of communities, we can collectively work toward research that uplifts and empowers rather than extracts and exploits.

Through my work with Help for Landowners, the Center for Heirs Property Preservation, and the Great Plains Action Society, I have witnessed how transformative this approach can be. Their leadership, patience, and wisdom have not only deepened the impact of our research but have also changed the way I think about my role as a researcher.

Equity is not a destination but a journey, one that is best travelled in collaboration with the communities we aim to serve.