Our research aims to enhance understanding and governance of economic activities in situations of protracted displacement. This involves identifying and engaging with individuals and organisations with interest in, and particularly with influence over, these economic processes. These stakeholders include those working at local, national and international levels who have a role in shaping the context in which we are researching and, importantly, in tackling the issues that we focus on.
Such stakeholders have a dual role in the project. They are co-producers of knowledge generated through interviews that draw on their insights, and they are a target audience who can utilise the findings that emerge from the research. Involving them in the research process means every stage in the research is shaped and informed by relevant expertise, but it also sensitises stakeholders to the critical questions of the research, and the issues and challenges experienced by displacement-affected communities in our research sites.
Stakeholders include the displacement-affected community, i.e. displaced people and ‘host’ populations, as well as the local and national non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that support them, local and national government agencies, and the private sector actors who operate in our research sites. They also include international organisations such as international NGOs, bilateral institutions (e.g. the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) and multilateral bodies (e.g. the United Nations Refugee Agency).
We will approach stakeholders for individual key informant interviews. These provide a way of engaging with those stakeholders who may be unable to attend workshops, a more frequent form of engagement with those who do, and an opportunity to discuss issues which are not raised in workshops due to time or confidentiality.
As well as interviewing individual stakeholders to access diverse expertise and multiple perspectives, the research teams will organise stakeholder meetings and workshops to bring them together. The workshops generate opportunities for stakeholders to co-produce knowledge through multi-sector dialogue and to forge new connections. The workshops also create spaces for community leaders to engage directly with, and be heard by, stakeholders who are active in their communities yet often removed from the lived experience of community members. Video narratives will allow knowledge to be exchanged virtually, between research sites and across countries. These kinds of exchanges can provide opportunities for learning as well as for co-developing appropriate responses.
At the global level we have a Project Advisory Board made up of representatives from the international community who support and advise the research team. The Advisory Board provides expert input into the research design process. It also identifies links with regional and international agendas and initiatives, and with policy spaces and stakeholders, to support communication and engagement with research findings.