This article speaks to the challenges faced conducting an individual, applied dissertation project just months after participating in team-oriented, community-based participatory research (CBPR). As a researcher, I was deeply affected by CBPR's prioritizations of collaborative research designs, reciprocal learning spaces, and more immediately useful research outcomes for the community. After participating in CBPR, I struggled with returning to a project that was far less community-centered. As a result, I integrated CBPR practices into my dissertation research creating a complicated, but worthwhile, CBPR-like approach to a more traditional applied project. Here I share the successes and failures of this process, as well as recommendations that might continue to move us as anthropologists, departments, and a discipline, closer to research that purposefully prioritizes the knowledges, experiences, and desires of communities. In sharing this experience I hope to offer insights to others working toward more equitable and ethical research.
Agricultural Collaborative Research Outcomes System (AgCROS): A network of networks connecting food security, the environment, and human health