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Introducing Knowledge equity: How to develop a critical reflective approach to lived experience research

Presenter(s): Donna Arrondelle, Stephen Ashe, Fleur Riley, Danica Darley


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In recent times, academics and policy makers have shown a growing interest in the notion of lived experience as they seek to engage the ‘experience(s) of people on whom a social issue, or combination of issues, has had a direct personal impact’ (Sandhu, 2017: 6). However, the turn to lived experience is often narrated as an uncritically positive experience for those referred to as ‘experts by experience’, disregarding that engaging with such voices can at times compound broader social inequalities.  Developing a knowledge equity approach can be useful way for academics and policy makers to avoid perpetuating such unintentional harms when engaging and developing knowledge that seeks to benefit those who are commonly referred to as ‘experts by experience’. 

What is knowledge equity?

Knowledge equity is “a commitment to focus on knowledge and communities that have been left out of [existing] structures of power and privilege, and to breaking down the social, political, and technical barriers preventing people from accessing and contributing to free knowledge” (Campbell, 2022). Knowledge equity enables ‘experts by experience’ to contribute to systems change. (Sandhu, 2021).  

JoAnn Jaffe (2017: 391) contends that that “social inequities are made possible by and compounded by knowledge inequity”. So much so, Jaffe suggests that we can avoid perpetuating such harms by creating “ecologies of knowledge” whereby different types of knowledge are understood, valued and “respected on their own terms” (2017: 408-409). This is done by broadening the parameters of both who is considered to be a credible knower, as well as what constitutes legitimate forms of knowledge. This means creating conditions whereby individuals and communities traditionally excluded from knowledge creation are positioned as integral to the decision-making processes which will determine how knowledge is to be produced and disseminated.



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Engaging new voices and alternative ways of doing things

Engaging ‘experts by experience’ on an equal footing when designing and implementing research is an important step towards knowledge equity. This will look different in different projects as there is no singular way to meaningfully prioritise experiential knowledge. It is a bespoke and iterative approach which is contingent on the context of your research project and the capacity of your lived experience partners. However, critical reflective questioning is also key step in building meaningful inclusion. This requires an ongoing interrogation of our assumptions, practices, and perspectives. It encourages academic researchers and policy makers to routinely assess whose voices are being included if not prioritised, whose knowledge is being validated, and who is being excluded from the conversation. This process requires researchers to challenge conventional hierarchies of knowledge, and to create democratic space where both alternative epistemologies and ways of producing knowledge are heard.



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The role of organisational and institutional frameworks on knowledge equity and lived experience work

Critical reflective questioning can also extend beyond the individual researcher to the broader institutional contexts. A knowledge equity approach asks academic institutions to consider their policies and practices regarding whose knowledge is valued and how it is rewarded. It can also examine the ways that research findings are made accessible and beneficial to the communities involved. These questions emphasize the importance of disseminating knowledge in a way that is not only inclusive but also responsive to the needs of those whose lived experiences should be at the centre of the research.



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Re-imagining your knowledge equity praxis

Having developed a working definition of knowledge democracy, mapped your personal ecology of knowledge and reflected on the various things which shape the way you produce and disseminate knowledge, researchers and policy makers may want to ask yourself the following questions: 1) Can you think of a time when you have re-thought or re-imagined your own knowledge? 2) When, or if, rethinking your own knowledge, whose voices and which alternative lived experiences, theories and perspectives did/ might you engage with in order to produce and engage with experiential knowledge in more equitable ways?



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Summary

For a more detailed exploration as to how you might develop a knowledge equity approach, please see,  Arrondelle, Donna and Ashe, Stephen and Darley, Danica and Riley, Fleur and Harriott, Paula and Ahmad, Fauzia and Bargallie, Debbie and Conway, Marc and Harrison, Dalton and Lewis, Hannah and Liddiard, Kirsty and McCusker, Michael and Narayanan, Pradeep and Outram, Esther and Skeet, Aisling and White, Lauren (2024) Knowledge equity: a framework for critical reflection. Manual. National Centre for Research Methods. Knowledge equity: a framework for critical reflection - NCRM EPrints Repository

Please note that this resource and the above publication was co-produced by individuals, many/most with lived experience expertise plus academics; with some of us embodying both identities. 




Supporting materials

About the author

Donna Arrondelle is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton. As a critical interdisciplinary scholar in the Centre for Population Health Sciences her research focuses on health justice, working with ‘justice-impacted’ adults and their children. Donna brings combined academic expertise and lived experience expertise of maternal imprisonment to her work advancing participatory and knowledge-equity methodologies. She is actively involved in a number of coproduced projects centring expertise by experience of incarceration and other excluded communities. 

Stephen Ashe is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Durham University. Stephen has conducted research on racism, class, the far right, anti-racism and anti-fascism, whiteness, empire and racial inequality in education. More recently, anti-racist work in prisons with colleagues at Durham, as well as ‘yarning’ with Indigenous scholar Debbie Bargallie in relation to Indigenous research ethics, has led Stephen to reflect further on the role that lived experience has played in his anti-racist public sociological work.

Fleur Riley is a PhD researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Durham. Fleur’s work focuses on the lived experiences of criminalised women. More specifically, Fleur’s research explores issues of trust and trauma among young female prisoners, drawing attention to how trust is crucial for rehabilitation, as well as how trust can be seriously degraded by traumatic life experiences and multiple experiences of abuse. Fleur has also published research on heroin assisted treatment in Britain.

Danica Darley is a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield. Dani’s PhD research examined the experiences of care-experienced young people of child criminal exploitation (CCE) and was developed with three young people who had been in the care of the local authority and had experienced CCE. Prior to coming into academia in 2017 Dani worked with children in care and those on the fringes of the criminal justice system in Scotland and England for 15 years. She is also a lived experience criminologist having served a custodial sentence, experiencing first-hand the harms of the criminal justice system. Her research interests include care-experience, child exploitation, women in conflict with the law, relational practice, professional boundaries, lived experience criminology and participatory methods. 

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