Towards a Framework for Building Community-University Resilience Research Agendas

Abstract

In this paper, we ask: “How can we scope multiyear, multiscalar community⁻university collaborations that draw on the university’s diverse resources and contribute to community resilience„? We approach this question by presenting the development and application of the Advancing Collaborative Transdisciplinary Scholarship Framework (the “ACTS Framework„) which we argue has been successful at helping us better understand, foster, and work towards communities’ resilience. The ACTS Framework, informed by our collective expertise in critical community-engaged scholarship (CES) and community resilience, contributes to knowledge and practice in critical CES, in particular by providing guidance for scoping and sustaining complex community⁻university collaborations. The structured yet iterative process involved in the framework development and application affirms and extends the work of other scholars interested in the links between CES and community resilience. Our contributions offer two other important practices—centring community concerns and facilitating cross-project collaboration—to critical CES knowledge and practice and highlight two promising practices of linking structures that facilitate community⁻university collaborations—specifically, a well-organized institutional memory and holding and bridging relationships.

Keywords

• critical community-engaged scholarship
• community–university collaborations
• community resilience