Editorial

Being an academic researcher implies making several decisions in the course of one’s career. For instance, what topic to investigate, which methodology to use, where to study and test the hypotheses, whether to cover as many topics as possible or concentrate on a specific line of research, where to submit and publish the finished articles, etc. Yet another important decision is to decide whether to work as a single author or as part of a team, which is the focus of this editorial.

Co-researching complexities: Learning strategies for edge walking in community–university research partnerships

Community–university research partnerships (CURPs) comprise a diverse group of stakeholders who share differing capabilities and diverse insights into the same issues, and they are widely regarded as valuable to navigate the best course of action. Partnering as co-researchers is core to nurturing these partnerships, but it requires careful navigation of complexities. The different insider and outsider positionalities occupied by co-researchers highlight experiences of ‘walking on the edges’ of each other’s worlds. This not only challenges these collaborations, but also enables a depth of understanding that may not be achieved in CURPs where the luxury of, or effort in, building a team of co-researchers to collect, analyse and write up data is not present. This article focuses on learning strategies to advance the co-researching capacities of CURPs where stakeholders occupy divergent positions. The focus will be on lessons from a co-researching partnership comprising a university-affiliated academic researcher, a local Kenyan non-governmental organization (NGO) and members of a community in which the NGO worked. We argue that applying selected learning strategies may facilitate positive experiences of edge walking and enhance the meaningful two-way sharing required for cross-cultural CURPs. It is recommended that community and university research partners examine the utility of these learning strategies for strengthening co-researching in CURP contexts.

Community Voices the Need to Write, Record, and Disseminate Research Findings From the Grassroots

Research on Indigenous people has moved from looking in on a subject to having the subjects as research partners, alongside academic researchers. Community-based research has a number of ethical requirements that means research partners have a voice. How this voice is captured, stored, and distributed is of great importance. For many publishers, academic or institutional, the voice of the layman or grassroots organisations are not valued. This results in much work going unpublished and hence being poorly archived. Often the stories of community are told with an earthy richness that is lacking in academic writing. This is partly due cultural storytelling, not writing to the rigidity of academia. This chapter will discuss a variety of methods that can be employed to raise the voice of community research partners who may not be academics and academically minded. However, the stories of our partners are important and are just as valid as those of the academic researcher.

The Contribution of Data Science Applied to Customer Relationship Management

In the face the contemporary world lives, and the consequent data produced at an unprecedented speed through digital media platforms, the data are nowadays called the new global currency. It raises numerous opportunities to improve outcomes in businesses, namely at the level of customer relationship management (CRM) strategies and their systems. Nevertheless, how analytics can be applied and support the customer relationship processes seems unclear for academics and industries. To better connect customer relationship processes needs and what data science analytics can offer, this chapter presents a systematic literature review around the concepts, tools, and techniques behind this field, looking particularly on customer acquisition and customer retention in businesses. The outcomes highlight that academic researcher works in this field are very scare and recent. Searching the Scopus and Web of Science databases resulted in only 12 documents from 2013 to 2020, eight of them published in the last two years.

Consent and ethics within sex work and research: An academic and practitioner perspective

In this short piece, we explore some areas of consent within BDSM in relation to our roles as a practitioner and as an academic researcher. Beverly Yuen Thompson is a sociology professor who specializes in ethnographies of deviant subcultures with an emphasis on an intersectional approach. In this short piece, she uses her experience of conducting a long-term ethnography in a BDSM community. Miss Couple (2018) is the author of The Ultimate Guide to Bondage: Creating Intimacy through the Art of Restraint and a relationship and intimacy coach. Miss Couple was previously a manager of a BDSM establishment, from which she draws on her experience for this piece.

Compassion in mental health: a literature review

Purpose This paper aims to systematically review the current literature on compassion in mental health from a historical, service user and carer (SUAC)/academic researcher perspective with respect to the current paradigm/biomedical model. Design/methodology/approach Searches were conducted in CIANHL Complete, Academic Search Complete, British Education Index, ERIC, MEDLINE, PsycArticles, Scorpus, Proquest Central using a simplified PRISM approach. Findings In the UK, the SUAC-movement facilitated the adoption of more compassionate mental health in statutory services. Across the world, compassion-based approaches may be viewed as beneficial, especially to those experiencing a biomedical model “treatment”. Health-care workers, suffering burnout and fatigue during neoliberal economics, benefit from compassion training, both in their practice and personally. Randomised control trials (RCTs) demonstrate compassion-type interventions are effective, given sufficient intervention timing, duration and design methodology. Psychology creates outcome measures of adequacies and deficiencies in compassion, demonstrating their importance statistically, with reservations. The effective protection of mental health by self-compassion in both SUACs and health care professionals is evident. It is clear from qualitative research that SUACs prefer compassionate mental health. It also makes a large difference to mental health in general populations. Implications for practice and suggestions for future research are given, including a necessity to fund RCTs comparing compassionate mental health interventions with the biomedical model. Unless statutory mental health services adopt this emerging evidence base, medics and their SUACs will continue to rely on pharmaceuticals. Originality/value This is the first integrated literature review of compassion in mental health from a historical, SUAC/academic researcher viewpoint using all research methodologies.

Secrecy, Spooks and Ghosts: Memoirs and Contested Memory at the CIA

The CIA is increasingly symbolic of major controversies in American foreign policy. It also presents the academic researcher with a fascinating paradox – since it is simultaneously secret and yet high-profile. In part, this is due to the CIA's willingness to allow former operatives to write memoirs. We argue that the memoir literature, authored by CIA personnel both high and low, together with others who worked alongside them, is now so dense that this allows us a degree of triangulation. Yet these memoirs are increasingly collective productions, involving censors, ghostwriters and teams of researchers, introducing conflicting voices into the text, and adding layers of separation between author and reader. We suggest that these ghosted memoirs, therefore, operate on several levels. For good or ill, these books shape the American public's perception of the CIA and should be studied closely, especially by those interested in the subjectivities of image management. This essay seeks to explore these issues by comparing four memoirs by CIA directors and acting directors who have served since 9/11.