What practical and ethical dilemmas do anthropologists face in the design of knowledge transfer activities for research proposals? Funding councils increasingly view knowledge exchange as an essential component of social science research. Knowledge exchange also entails the forging of reciprocal relations with informants or “users” and the identification of non-academic “user referees” to comment on the applicability and usefulness of the research. This paper reflects on some of the issues and concerns relating to knowledge exchange that arose during the process of writing a multi-researcher, multi-sited funding application. It addresses issues surrounding the planning of audiovisual knowledge exchange activities at the proposal stage (such as podcasts, interactive websites, photographs, and art installations), and aims to initiate discussion about the implications of Knowledge Exchange for ethnographic practice.
Podcasts and Proposals: Designing Knowledge Exchange Activities and Identifying User Referees for a Funding Application