Engaging with Knowledge Co-Production: Critical Reflections from Global Doctoral Researchers

There has been a recent shift across social science disciplines to engaging with co- production as a practical strategy for urban equality and as a guiding principle in research design (Osuteye et al. 2019), and many doctoral researchers are keen to engage with co-production in their research projects. Conventionally, doctoral programmes are designed to be time-bound, pre-defined, rigidly structured and independent, and to result in an individual piece of work. Therefore, critical aspects of co-production do not easily align with traditional doctoral programmes and there is a gap in the current literature and methodological precedents regarding the feasibility of co-production within a doctoral environment.
In this chapter, we – a group of ten doctoral students – reflect on our experiences of engaging with co-production as a research practice within UK doctoral programmes. In January 2021, we participated in the first Knowledge in Action Towards Urban Equality (KNOW) Doctoral Training Course (also known as KNOW DTC), entitled ‘Co-producing Doctoral Urban Research in the Global South’, and have continued to work together to critically examine and document our experiences, which form the basis of this chapter.