Are you interested in learning how to effectively collaborate with communities, policymakers, and stakeholders to address complex, real-world issues?
This Fall 2026, ANTH 410/610: Knowledge Co-Production: Theory, Methods, Practice, a 3-credit lecture-discussion course will be open to students across all disciplines.
- When: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
- Where: 1102 Woods
Course Description:
Knowledge co-production is increasingly promoted as the gold standard for scientists, policy makers and implementers, industry reps, local community members, and other stakeholders to assess issues, collect data, and develop effective solutions to the problems communities face. This course delves into the theoretical foundations, qualitative methodologies, and real-world execution of these collaborative processes. We begin by interrogating the boundaries of epistemology; deconstructing Western scientific paradigms alongside Post-Normal Science and plural knowledge systems, including Indigenous, Traditional, and Local Environmental Knowledge (LEK), to analyze how different traditions validate claims of truth. Moving from theory to practice, students will learn to operationalize a robust qualitative toolkit, using collaborative ethnography, listening sessions, and narrative analysis to navigate institutional power dynamics, manage historical networks, and share interpretive authority with community partners.
The final segment of the course provides a vital reality check by examining how co-production operates under constraint across diverse applied problem-types, including cultural heritage preservation, zoonotic disease epidemiology, and natural resource governance. We will rigorously critique the "dark side" of co-production, confronting the systemic barriers, funding constraints, and institutional inertia that frequently reduce collaboration to a tokenistic or superficial exercise. Finally, the course addresses the material afterlife of research projects. Students will investigate system-level failures like the "zombie project" effect, where technical data tools decay due to a lack of long-term administrative support, and the accumulation of "relational debt" when deep community trust is treated as a temporary energy input with a hard stop-date. Ultimately, students will design proactive mitigation strategies to build enduring, community-owned project sustainability. While this course will emphasize environmentally-oriented research and applied problem-solving, readings and discussion can be useful for students in many disciplinary fields.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
Cheers,
Jen Shaffer - lshaffe1@umd.edu