By Luca Sára Bródy
In an era of overlapping crises – from climate breakdown to deepening social inequalities – calls for more “impactful” research are everywhere. Universities promise solutions, funding bodies demand relevance, and scholars are expected to produce knowledge that can address urgent societal challenges. But what if the problem is not only what research produces, but how it is done – and why current ways of doing research so often fail to respond to these crises?
A recent paper by our team, the Sustain Action Method Lab, aims to rethink research from the ground up. Instead of focusing on outputs – articles, reports, policy briefs – it shifts attention to the often invisible processes through which knowledge is created. Using the metaphor of “kitchen-work,” we argue that research, much like cooking, depends on relational, preparatory, and frequently undervalued labour. This is more than a metaphor – it points to a deeper problem: much of what makes research possible remains invisible, undervalued, and systematically excluded from how we evaluate knowledge.
The hidden labour of knowledge
Much of academic research still operates under a familiar model: the researcher as expert, producing knowledge about the world from a distance. Even when participatory methods are used, collaboration is often treated as a technique – something added on, rather than something that fundamentally reshapes how knowledge is produced. We challenge this view by arguing that collaborative research is not simply about including more voices, but about recognising the labour that sustains relationships, trust, and shared understanding. This “kitchen-work” includes everything from organising meetings and maintaining long-term connections to navigating power dynamics and caring for participants. Yet this labour is rarely acknowledged. It is often pushed to the margins of academic writing and evaluation, much like reproductive labour in broader society. And this matters, because without this work, collaborative research cannot exist – yet academic systems continue to reward outputs while ignoring the labour that sustains them.
Beyond participation as a method
The paper also offers a critique of how participatory approaches have been absorbed into mainstream academia. Once rooted in radical traditions of action research and collective struggle, participation has increasingly been turned into a managerial tool, stripped of its political edge and aligned with institutional demands. Against this trend, we insist that collaboration should be understood as a political commitment. It is not about inviting communities into pre-defined research frameworks, but about co-producing knowledge within ongoing struggles. This means working alongside activists and communities not as observers or facilitators, but as co-strugglers. Such an approach blurs the boundaries between research and activism, between knowledge production and political action. It also challenges the idea that research can or should be neutral – showing instead that knowledge production is always embedded in power relations.
Working within, against, and beyond academia
To make sense of these tensions, we introduce a framework in which collaborative research is understood to operate simultaneously within, against, and beyond academia. This distinction is not just analytical – it reveals both the limits of current academic practice and the possibilities for transforming it.:
- Working within academia means using its resources – funding, institutional spaces, networks – to support movements and communities. This can involve sharing knowledge, organising workshops, or redirecting research agendas toward socially relevant questions.
- Working against academia involves challenging its norms and hierarchies. This includes questioning what counts as “good” research, experimenting with alternative forms of writing and dissemination, and making space for activist knowledge within academic outputs. But perhaps most importantly, the paper calls for
- thinking beyond academia. This involves imagining entirely different ways of producing and sharing knowledge – ones that are slower, more relational, and less driven by competition and output metrics. It also means stepping outside academic spaces, engaging in community settings, and participating directly in struggles for social change.
Slowing down in a fast academia
One of the most important arguments in our paper is the call for “slow scholarship.” In contrast to the fast-paced logic of contemporary academia – where success is measured by publications and project cycles – collaborative research requires time: time to build trust, time to understand local contexts, and time to stay with communities beyond the lifespan of a project. This temporal dimension is not just practical, but also political. It challenges the extractive nature of much academic research, where knowledge is taken from communities without sustained engagement or accountability. Instead, we advocate for long-term embeddedness – remaining connected to the field even after funding ends, and supporting the ongoing work of movements and communities. In this sense, slowing down is not a luxury, but a necessary condition for producing knowledge that is accountable rather than extractive.
Knowledge from the margins
The paper also speaks to broader inequalities in global knowledge production. Drawing on experiences from Eastern Europe, we highlight how knowledge produced in so-called “semi-peripheral” contexts is often marginalised within international academia. These hierarchies are not accidental, but reflect long-standing power relations in how knowledge is valued and circulated. Collaborative methodologies can help disrupt this hierarchy. By bringing together academic and activist perspectives, and by valuing local and situated knowledges, such approaches open up space for alternative ways of understanding the world. This is not only about inclusion, but about transformation. It is about challenging whose knowledge counts, and on what terms.
Research as collective practice
Ultimately, this paper offers a different vision of research. One that is less about individual achievement and more about collective practice. Less about producing outputs and more about sustaining relationships. Less about control and more about care. The kitchen metaphor captures this shift: in a shared kitchen, knowledge is not owned but co-created. The process matters as much as the result. And the labour that makes everything possible – often invisible, often undervalued – is recognised as central. In a time when academia is under pressure to deliver solutions to complex global problems, this perspective is both timely and necessary. It reminds us that the answers we seek may not come from better methods alone, but from rethinking the very foundations of how we produce knowledge. If research is to meaningfully respond to today’s crises, it may need less emphasis on producing answers – and more attention to how knowledge is collectively made.
This article is based on the research paper “The Kitchen-Work of Collaborative Research: Recipes for Transformative Methodologies” by Sustain Action Method Lab, published in Antipode – A radical journal of Geography.
Luca Sára Bródy is an urban sociologist working on social movements and citizen mobilisation, state-civil society relations, exploring urban-rural divides and food sovereignty initiatives. She is a senior research fellow at ELTE Centre for Economic and Regional Studies in Budapest, Hungary, and a research affiliate at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden. She is a member of HerStory Collective, a Budapest-based feminist food-related research collaborative. She is also part of the international research project SustainAction that analyses the resilience and resourcefulness of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe, together with colleagues from Czechia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Sweden. Related website: www.sustainaction.org
Image: Maximus Beaumont on Unsplash
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of the EADI Debating Development Blog or the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes