Resources and publications

Marie-Hélène Desestre, from the RESOLIS association is in charge of the “Observatory of Participatory Research” component for EQUIPACT. The experience of RESOLIS is being put to good use in this project: “1,800 initiatives from the field have now been identified by the RESOLIS Observatory, most often centred on ecological or social issues. We record the framework and context of each project, its objectives and actions, as well as feedback on the difficulties encountered and the prospects envisaged. All registered initiatives are reviewed by our reading committee before going online.” 
 

EQUIPACT’s “Observatory” component has been working along the same lines: “The aim is for everyone involved to practise this methodology, and for this collective effort to enable us to identify ways of improving the observatory. This will also help to promote participatory research initiatives.”

Julien Mary, a historian and CNRS research engineer at the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme SUD, coordinated the survey on the conditions for the emergence of a participatory research project: from identifying a societal problem to formulating a research question, including the challenge of mobilising stakeholders. They carried out a two-phase survey: 1. an online questionnaire jointly put together by EQUIPACT members, “to document the societal issues (which are at the heart of the research carried out by the structures)”, and 2. a series of interviews conducted mainly by the project engineer, Jimena Sierra Andrade (LISIS). 

Among the first results, Julien Mary notes that “the process of jointly constructing knowledge is often not an objective in itself. Research projects are motivated by a desire to do something about a problematic situation, and research is a means of achieving this”. Whether it’s to gain a better understanding of a complex socio-environmental process, develop a professional practice, jointly develop a socio-technical innovation, etc., participatory research is seen as the best (if not the only) possible way of thinking collectively about an issue and working together towards a goal for transformation. This means giving a voice to certain stakeholders who are not recognised as partners in academic research. There is a desire to change the relationship between science and society. Shifting from a deficit approach to a capacity approach, the world is no longer (only) made up of audiences to be educated, but of a community of stakeholders with expertise and knowledge gained from experience, “political messages” and “empowerment” projects, which are called upon to hybridise with scientific knowledge.

Catherine Duray is the EQUIPACT coordinator for this theme, and is in charge of research and training at the Crefad network. This network brings together sixteen associations working in the field of popular education, and its activities include training for a Diploma in Advanced Studies in Social Practices (DHEPS).

According to this volunteer, intermediation is essential to the project: “Intermediation enables stakeholders with different statuses, resources or areas of expertise to advance knowledge together”. Intermediation goes beyond the level of a research project; it covers all the activities involved in bringing participants together, from the diagnosis of a problem to its resolution. It therefore requires a wide range of skills that are distributed throughout society.

For EQUIPACT, the team carried out a survey of existing training courses in the field of participatory research: “The aim is not to be exhaustive, but to explore the training needs of our contributors. The challenge is not to standardise training courses, but to highlight their diversity, which reflects the variety of situations to which they respond.” 

In 2025, the creation of the University Diploma at Université Gustave Eiffel on Co-creation in Transition: Supporting Change in Multi-Stakeholder Innovation Processes for Environmental and Societal Transitions is linked to the work carried out by EQUIPACT.

ASIRPA (Analyse des impacts sociétaux de la recherche - Analysis of the Societal Impacts of Research) is an initiative of researchers at INRAE. This approach was introduced in 2011 and looked into the societal impact of research in more than 60 cases. Evelyne Lhoste, a researcher at INRAE and head of EQUIPACT’s “real time ASIRPA” component, sums up the aim of this method in a few words: “A collective and iterative discussion on the joint development of EQUIPACT and the context in which it operates, allowed reflexivity without loosing sight of our ultimate societal goals. We have tried to anticipate the changes we would like to see and approached partners which we considered were essential to the success of our initiatives. We have also collectively acknowledged societal learning such as progress in the legitimacy of researchers from the voluntary sector.”

The consortium must now engage with the relevant stakeholders in order to bring about change. For this reason, it is keen to publicise the results of its work among participatory research networks: the survey on the conditions for emergence, data on training, the existence of the participatory research observatory, and the use of the real time ASIRPA method.