Connected Communities

Series Editors: Keri Facer, University of Bristol, UK and George McKay, University of East Anglia, UK.

The Connected Communities series showcases collaborative research between universities and communities, which seeks to understand the changing nature of communities and their role in addressing contemporary individual, societal and global concerns.

Based initially on the findings from the UK Research Council’s Connected Communities Research programme, the series today brings together some of the most innovative writing on collaborative and co-produced research methods. It explores encounters between interdisciplinary research, culture and creativity, and the expertise and insights of communities themselves. It discusses how academic and public knowledge can be put into productive dialogue to achieve significant theoretical, methodological, creative and political breakthroughs.

The overarching aim of the series is to make a substantive contribution in three areas:

• to the theoretical and empirical understanding of the role of communities (in contrast to, for example, individuals, policy makers, ‘societies’) in addressing contemporary individual, societal and global concerns
• to the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity – in particular, to the bringing together of arts, humanities and social sciences perspectives and methods.
• to the theory and practice of collaborative research with communities – in particular, to the use of interdisciplinary methods with communities who have previously often been excluded from formal research processes.

The series is strongly and reflexively interdisciplinary, and consequently draws on and contributes to a wide range of disciplines. ‘Core’ disciplinary areas include: cultural and social geography; participatory and community arts; design (social innovation); sociology; history; policy studies; economics (social innovation, asset-based development, creative industries); urban planning; community development; philosophy (studies of time in particular); new materialist studies; environmental studies; media and cultural studies; performing arts; representation (literature, film).

As series editors we want to encourage proposals for books that address clearly defined issues, themes and areas that demonstrably move forward thinking in an area related to the theoretical, methodological and political challenges described above. If the proposal is for a ‘project book’ it needs to be demonstrably more than, for example, a description of workpackages in the single project: authors and editors need to make the case for how their work will bring in new audiences and ideas, how it will address challenging issues and the contentious debates in the field of co-production and collaborative research.

The report, 'Creating Living Knowledge', which provides some context for the Connected Communities Programme, community-university relationships and the participatory turn in the production of knowledge, is available to download here.

You can download the full series rationale here.

Download the series guidelines here.