Why this, why now?

By Jennifer Mateer; Jeremy Auerbach; Susanne Boerner; Camellia Biswas; Eveleigh Buck-Matthews; Dingha Chrispo; Caitlin Hafferty; Raffaele Ippolito; Maja Jorgensen; Eifiona Lane; Mrinalini Raj; Rebecca Roberts; Aled Singleton; Neil Turnbull

Geography has never been a neutral discipline. From its roots in colonial surveys and mapping to contemporary debates about whose knowledge counts and who gets to produce it, the field has always been shaped by questions of power. Successive waves of critical scholarship, including feminist, Marxist, Indigenous, queer, more-than-human, and decolonial approaches, have pushed geographers to rework their research questions, methods, and political commitments. These interventions have only grown more urgent as the world they describe has become harder to ignore: widening income inequality, climate crisis, biodiversity loss, forced migration, and the erosion of democratic institutions.

 In this context, questions about how knowledge is produced become especially important: who is recognized as an authority, whose interests are served, and who bears the consequences of decision-making? Participatory approaches respond directly to these concerns. Rather than treating research as simply a way of interpreting the world, these approaches understand it as one of the practices through which space is continually made and remade, even as researchers navigate competitive funding systems, expanding digital and AI-mediated infrastructures, and increasingly complex ethical regulations.

Rather than offering a rigid framework, we offer a practical and collective guide for conducting participatory research with care, realism, and confidence. Many scholars are now asked to “engage communities” while working inside institutions that prioritize specific “academic” outputs. Meanwhile, communities themselves are increasingly cautious about research participation given their experiences of extractive research encounters. Research engagements that invite participation without shifting power, resources, or capacity are rightly met with skepticism. This guide begins from that tension. These rules distill lessons about power, ethics, and action under current research conditions. We have written these for researchers, practitioners, and communities who are committed to participatory values while working within imperfect institutional settings. The goal is to support participatory geography that can hold critique and practical responsibility together.

Rule 1: There are no fixed rules — embrace the mess

Participatory research must remain adaptable and responsive to the unexpected There is no single template to follow. Projects often evolve in directions researchers did not initially anticipate, and those shifts frequently produce the most meaningful insights. Participants should be able to shape their involvement as relationships deepen and priorities change. Following the lead of participants, rather than the plan, is often what makes meaningful collaboration possible.

Rule 2: Share power — hand over the pen

Participatory research moves beyond research about or for communities toward research conducted with them. At each stage of the research process, ask: can participants do this, and do they want to? Work dialogically, as research should be a practice of care and mutual learning.  However, power does not disappear, and handing over the pen is not simple. They require ongoing attention to how power is shared, negotiated, and sometimes resisted.

Rule 3: Don’t forget the a — action is the point

Participatory Action Research is built around cycles of action and reflection. Maintaining contact with collaborators, supporting community initiatives, and responding to emerging needs builds solidarity. This means bringing research commitments into the here and now: maintaining relationships, responding to changing circumstances, and strengthening accountability between researchers and collaborators.

Rule 4: Design methods that actually include people

Participatory methods must actively support equitable collaboration. Feminist, queer, Indigenous, and intersectional traditions emphasize engaging participants in how they contribute, what they need to participate, and how relationships are built. This includes recognizing lived experience as knowledge and designing spaces where participants can contribute meaningfully. Practical details, like meeting structure and facilitation, shape whether inclusion actually happens.

Rule 5: Practice ethics, not paperwork

While ethics boards play an important role, they can prioritize institutional liability over participant well-being and may reproduce colonial power relations. Consent should be ongoing, rather than treated as a one-time briefing, and communities should help define harm, benefit, and data ownership.  Participatory approaches do not automatically guarantee ethical practice. They require researchers to keep asking who is protected, who is burdened, and who benefits.

Rule 6: Budget for participation — get money to people

Participation requires time, and time has value. Treating community involvement as a gift that requires no reciprocity is not a neutral oversight; it reflects whose contributions the academy has historically recognized as worth paying for. Researchers should therefore name compensation explicitly in grant applications, budgeting for it before the project begins. In practice, this might mean honoraria for attending meetings, payment for interviews, or covering costs like transportation and childcare that make participation possible in the first place. Where possible, projects should also leave resources or skills behind.

Rule 7: Co-design care, risk, and safety

Rather than relying solely on institutional checklists, work with collaborators to identify and address risks together.  Communities should help define what counts as harm and how safety is managed. Decisions about language, authorship, and data sharing can unintentionally reproduce social hierarchies if left unexamined. Approaching these issues collectively grounds care and responsibility.

Rule 8: Data is relational — treat it that way

In participatory research, data emerges from relationships and from questions that communities themselves consider meaningful. Decisions about data collection, interpretation, and dissemination should be made collaboratively. Decisions about openness, access, and circulation should be made with collaborators, not assumed in advance. Participatory projects can strengthen community capacity by building research skills among participants. This helps ensure expertise remains beyond the project itself.

Rule 9: Navigate institutional constraints without letting them win

Universities, funding agencies, and ethics committees shape what participatory research can look like. These systems often prioritize measurable outputs and standardized procedures that sit uneasily with relational, emergent research. Collaborative design of methods and ethics can help ensure institutional requirements support, rather than undermine, participatory principles. Researchers can also strategically use institutional language around “co-production,” “impact,” and “community engagement” to secure support for projects that are genuinely participatory and action-oriented.

Rule 10: Write with, not about — EDI as everyday practice

Inclusive methods are not enough on their own. Participatory research also requires attention to authorship, communication, and recognition. Community collaborators should receive appropriate credit, including co-authorship where appropriate. Findings should be shared in forms that collaborators can access and use, not only through academic publications.  Participatory research also extends beyond human relationships. Land and more-than-human relations may also carry obligations that research must recognize.

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About the authors:

Jennifer Mateer is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Brandon University, Canada. Her work focuses on participatory research, food sovereignty, land-based learning, and community-led environmental issues.

Jeremy Auerbach is an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography at University College Dublin. Jeremy is a quantitative methodologist and works with communities facing environmental injustices.

Camellia Biswas is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her work focuses on climate injustice, political ecology, and more-than-human relations.

Dr Susanne Börner is Assistant Professor in Human Geography at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on youth everyday agency, emotions and urban well-being in the context of interconnected urban crises.

Eveleigh Buck-Matthews is a Lecturer in Criminology at Birmingham City University. Her research focuses on youth communities, music, resistance, and participatory creative methods.

Chrispo Babila Dingha is a Senior Researcher in the University of Bonn, Germany, and a Research Fellow in Stellenbosch University, South Africa and  part time lecturer in the University of Bamenda, Cameroon. His work focuses on nature-based solutions, climate adaptation, community engagement, and just sustainability transitions.

Caitlin Hafferty is an environmental social scientist and geographer at the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on participatory environmental governance, nature recovery, and science-policy engagement.

Raffaele Ippolito is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Health, University College London. His work explores environmental justice, health advocacy, and the inclusion of underrepresented communities in research.

Maja Jorgensen is an AHRC Innovation Scholar in Design and Visiting Fellow at The Open University. She is a participatory design researcher and transdisciplinary practitioner exploring co-design, collective imagination, participatory ecological futures, and community agency.

Mrinalini Raj is a final-year PhD candidate at IIT Roorkee, India, and Communications Coordinator of PyGyRG. Her research focuses on feminist geography, Indigenous women’s representation, and participatory methods.

Rebecca Roberts works at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on Nature Unlocked. Her work focuses on collaborative research, knowledge brokering, co-design, governance, and environmental monitoring.

Aled Singleton is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University. He is interested in long-term emotional and affective attachments to space and place

Eifiona Thomas Lane is a Lecturer in Geography at Bangor University. Her work focuses on community engagement, agri-food networks, sustainable communities, environmental policy, and rural stakeholder collaboration.

Neil Turnbull is an academic and architect with a PhD in Geography and Planning from Cardiff University. His work focuses on community infrastructures, community action, austerity, queer spaces, homelessness, and collective spaces of care.

Suggested further reading

Brydon-Miller, M. (2008). Ethics and action research: Deepening our commitment to principles of social justice and redefining systems of democratic practice. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice (2nd ed., pp. 199–210). SAGE. Available from: https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848607934.n19

Cahill, C., Sultana, F., & Pain, R. (2015) Participatory ethics: Politics, practices, institutions. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. Available from: https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/779

Kindon, S., Pain, R., & Kesby, M. (2007). Participatory action research approaches and methods: Connecting people, participation and place. Routledge. Available from: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203933671

Kindon, S., Pain, R., & Kesby, M. (Eds.). (2024). Critically engaging participatory action research. Routledge. Available from: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429400346

Participatory Geographies Research Group (PyGy). Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). https://www.rgs.org/research/research-groups/participatory-geographies/

Ramdas, K. & De Silva, M. (2025) Community engagement courses and feminist participatory action research: Pedagogies of sacrifice and refusal. The Geographical Journal. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.70035

Singleton, A., Brookes, E. & Slatter, R. (2025) Participatory collaborations between geographers and performance artists: Taking urban renewal histories to the street. Area. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/area.70052

How to cite

Mateer, J., Auerbach, J., Boerner, S., Biswas, C., Buck-Matthews, E., Chrispo, D., Hafferty, C., Ippolito, R., Jorgensen, M., Lane, E., Raj, M., Roberts, R., Singleton, A., Turnbull, N. (2026, June) 10 simple rules for contemporary participatory geography. Geography Directions. https://doi.org/10.55203/SMSU7749