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Knowledge brokerage: Exchange and synthesis

Facilitating the process of knowledge-to-action.

Knowledge brokerage: Exchange and synthesis

Knowledge exchange Facilitating the exchange of knowledge that drives informed action

  • We foster networks and platforms for two-way knowledge exchange between researchers and societal stakeholders, including policy-makers, NGOs, and communities.
  • This includes connecting networks of researchers and practitioners, sharing research findings in appropriate formats and forums, and creating opportunities for co-learning between academics and societal partners. 

Activities

  • Annual Science for Society Symposium

We host an annual Science for Society symposium at the Wits Rural Campus in collaboration with the Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Region (K2C) and the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON). The symposium brings together researchers, civil society and government representatives to share and discuss ongoing research within the central lowveld region. Building on the success of the inaugural symposium held in 2023, this event has now firmly established itself as an annual platform for learning, knowledge exchange, and networking.

  • Seminar series

We host monthly seminars at the Wits Rural Campus as an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to share and discuss the work they are doing in an informal get-together. Vibrant discussion and debate is encouraged.

Knowledge synthesis

Hosting, facilitating, and supporting transdisciplinary synthesis working groups to generate new knowledge using diverse data, theories, frameworks, knowledge and experiences. 

  • We provide logistical, operational and technical support in the tranquil African bushveld, away from urban distractions, for synthesis working groups tackling complex cross-disciplinary problems.
  • We give thematic prominence to topics that are a priority for Africa and the global South, with strong African participation and leadership in synthesis activities.
  • The Wits Rural Campus, with its world-class meeting, dining, and accommodation facilities located in a natural African landscape, and situated in close proximity to a regional airport, provides the ideal setting for such synthesis endeavours.

Supported working groups

  • Bob Scholes Synthesis Working Group: Converging pathways for an African sanitary revolution: Completed

This working group, named in honour of the late Prof. Bob Scholes, aimed to develop paradigms for urban sanitation in South Africa and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that are guided by the perspective that alternative approaches are required that reflect the way that the communities themselves have sought to meet their needs within and outside the traditional, formal urban frameworks.
Thatcher et al. (2024). Contextualising urban sanitation solutions through complex systems thinking: A case study of the South African sanitation system. Journal of Cleaner Production, 142084.

  • Engaging the problematic of extended urbanisation in South Africa: Current

South Africa’s Census 2022 has produced surprising results which require careful interrogation as they challenge conventional thought on urbanisation processes nationally and regionally. Instead of indicating a unilinear process of rural-urban migration, with population growth concentrated in major urban centres, the results suggest a far more complex patterning, with slow rates of growth in some large cities and high growth in some historically peripheral areas, such as the densely populated “rural” former Apartheid homelands. This working group seeks to understand the processes driving these changes, and to find an adequate vocabulary to describe them.

Knowledge Translation

Facilitating the process of sense-making of research for stakeholders

  • We work at the interface between researchers and policy-makers, decision-makers and programme implementers, to ensure that research contributes meaningfully to evidence-based action for positive change.
  • This involves connecting networks of producers and users of knowledge, and disseminating research findings in appropriate formats and forums. 
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