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“Academics
have a habit of crawling along the frontiers of knowledge
with a magnifying glass, blind to the wide vistas opening
up before them, and often reducing the most engaging subjects
to tedious debates about methodology. By looking at the
big picture, populists restore the excitement of intellectual
life.” – The Economist,
March 14, 2002
The Community / University Research
unit promotes the exchange of knowledge between the university
and community agencies and associations. "Community"
refers to civil society organizations such as non-profit
groups, social agencies, community organizations, or coalitions.
CURP represents the University of Toronto’s contribution
to applied scholarship on the practical problems and policy
issues associated with urban living, particularly poverty,
housing, homelessness, social welfare, and social justice
issues.
CURP’s overall goals
are: (1) to help define socially important and policy-relevant
research agendas; (2) to link researchers and identified
research needs; (3) to seek research funding sources that
include, but also go beyond, the traditional academic sources;
and (4) to develop new ways to communicate and disseminate
research findings.
CURP encourages information-sharing
and collaboration between community organizations or agencies
and academic researchers in designing high-quality applied
research projects on urban and community issues by:
Identifying
current research needs from the community and communicating
that information to researchers.
Connecting
university-based researchers with community-based research
needs by developing partnerships both to secure funding
and to carry out the research, especially but not exclusively
for participatory research projects.
Making
connections with community agencies or organizations
when university-based researchers doing community-driven
research require community partners in order to apply to
a particular funding body.
Planning
and hosting community forums, workshops, and other
events in collaboration with community-based organizations.
Identifying
opportunities to inform current public policy discussions
with the results of high-quality applied research projects.
Helping
university-based researchers and civil society organizations
develop, document, and assess models of research, education,
collaboration, and action that can be adapted for use in
the community context.
Research Dissemination
CURP seeks to develop improved
methods for effectively disseminating and making use of
research findings. These include:
Increasing
the visibility of research findings among relevant organizations,
professionals, journalists, students, and the general public
through the popular media.
Helping
university-based researchers make their research findings
available in non-technical language.
Identifying
and disseminating research and other materials developed
by community groups to university-based researchers.
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