Jul
Facilitation in research teams
I deeply enjoyed my relationship with the Imagining Technology for Disability Futures (ItDF) team over a couple of years and it’s lovely to have had an opportunity to publish, something I always enjoy but rarely make a priority.
The Imagining technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) programme explores how disability and technology will interact in the future, examining how our ideas about technology shape our view of disability, impact lived experiences, and influence the design of future tech and healthcare. It’s a collaboration between the universities of Leeds, Exeter, Sheffield, and Dundee. Co-production and interdisciplinarity are core themes of the programme, which involves partnering with disability groups, tech creators, artists, and arts organizations.
Under a Wellcome grant for Research Enrichment, the team worked with myself and Megan Evans to develop their capacity in facilitation, participation, inclusion and co-creation.
We delivered Technology of Participation Group Facilitation Methods training, developed a theory of change for evaluating the project, conducted Masterclasses on facilitating virtual and hybrid events, and provided mentoring for the team on event design and delivery. Orla also presented at the ItDF international conference in April 2024.
The ItDF Special Issue of the British Journal of Medical Humanities is available here. My article “Towards distributed facilitation in research teams: an example from itDf” is available for a limited number of downloads – contact me for a reprint if necessary.
The short paper argues that facilitation is a valuable tool for research teams. It suggests that an external facilitator is particularly helpful for more complex gatherings, and that for smaller or more routine gatherings, building skills within teams to enable the distribution of facilitation across team members is a viable alternative to hiring an external facilitator. Distributed facilitation is a way of supporting internal facilitators by helping to mitigate the time and effort it takes them to manage both process and content.
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