What academic traits create transformative research?

In her opening session for Research for Transformation Lab week in November 2025, GDI’s Diana Mitlin reflected on five academic personas and their possibilities for transformative research: the shining superstar, the convenor, the subversive persona, the collaborative co-producer, the shapeshifter. In this pod, we follow the recording of Diana’s reflections with a conversation between two of GDI’ researchers, Smith Ouma and Elisa Gambino. Ellie and Smith react to these personas through their own experiences and situate them in the current higher education and academic system of knowledge production. We hope you enjoy their reflections. The episode is hosted by Research for Transformation Lab manager Helen Underhill.

 Find out more about the Global Development Institute:

• Website
• Blog
• BlueSky 
• LinkedIn 
• Facebook
• Instagram 
• Newsletter 

Intro music Anna Banana by Eaters

Transcript

Helen Underhill:

Welcome to another mini pod as part of the Global Development Institute's Research for Transformation Lab. The Research for transformation lab is a space within GDI that is opening up conversations around the impact of development research, whilst holding onto GDI's core mission as a research institute where critical thinking meets social justice. One of the events we organised to dive into some really big ideas and themes related to research impact and transformative research was Transformation Lab Week. We explored various themes including storytelling, the slow and incremental nature of transformative research, the significance of relationship building and partnerships, ethics, the unintended consequences of the research impact agenda within higher education institutes in the UK, and much more. We were really fortunate to have the opening session presented by Professor Diana Mitlin, a name that will be very familiar to regular listeners of the GDI podcast. Shortly, you'll hear Diana's presentation, where she reflects on the theme of research for transformation through the lens of five academic personas. In her words, a presentation that allowed us to understand the ways in which the academic world interfaces with the non-academic world. I won't preempt the discussion that will follow, as I'm very grateful to be joined by two of my colleagues at GDI to explore some of the threads within Diana's presentations. So welcome and huge thanks to Drs. Ellie Gambino and Smith Ouma. 

Firstly, welcome to you both to the Transformation Lab Mini Pod, and thanks so much for giving up your time today. We know everybody's very busy. Before we go into Diana's recording and then hear your reflections, can you both introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about your research and perhaps the connection to Diana. 

Smith Ouma:

Hi, thanks for having us here. My name is Smith Ouma. I work at GDI as a research fellow with my research primarily focusing on urban informality and the politics of informal settlements. So I look at how local communities organise themselves, how communities mobilise and how they work across different spaces with a range of coalitions to bring about change within or to bring about transformations within their localities. So this is work that I've undertaken over the past 13 years or so, primarily in collaboration with Slum Dwellers International, which is a network of slum residents across more than 20 countries in Africa, South America, South East Asia, and Latin America as well. So, this work comes from a lot of collaboration and a lot of co-production of some of the interventions that residents once implemented across their settlements. And also it comes with a lot of coalition building across a range of spaces with policy actors and also other knowledge communities. So I also collaborate with two organisations here in Manchester. One is an NGO support organisation called CLASS, providing professional support to community service groups in Manchester and in Sheffield. And this organisation has been modelled around the Slum Dwellers International model. I'm also on the board of a local charity in Kenya called Akiba Mashinani Trust, which is basically the Kenya urban poor fund. So I work with these organisations in different areas, particularly on questions around social and affordable housing and also co-producing urban interventions across different domains. It's very good to be here. 

Helen Underhill:

Thank you, Smith. And I am sure there'll be a lot of resonances with some of the reflections that Diana gives, because I know you've worked really closely. And thank you. 

Elisa Gambino:

Hi, thanks so much for having me. It was great to be there at Diana's presentation on the day so I'm quite excited to get into it. So my work, I'm also based at GDI, I am currently finishing up my postdoc fellowship and my work is largely centred around the study of the internationalisation of Chinese capital in West Africa and how it impacts regional integration and industrialization. And recently, I've been working on the centrality of taxation to development. And this is the more collaborative part of my work. I work with a colleague in a Ghanaian higher education institution, Professor Michael Dankwa at GIMPA in Ghana, and with colleagues in the Ghana Revenue Authority. So it's a project joint between academic and non-academic researchers. 

Helen Underhill:

Thank you. So, yeah, it's really wonderful to have you both here. We're going to settle down now and listen to Professor Diana Mitlin's reflections on five academic personas and research for transformation, and then we're going into a discussion. So sit back and enjoy this around about 15 minutes with Diana. 

Diana Mitlin: 

Okay. So I thought it would be interesting to start us off with a reflection on the different academic personas around impact.

The persona number one, of course, is the Shining Superstar. The characteristics of this persona are perhaps the most well known. They are the ideal, I think, that the world sees in academics. Perhaps when we start, as early career academics, we have an image that we too will be shining superstars, appreciated for the particular wisdom we bring.

Of course, you might say the most shining superstar of all is the Nobel Prize winner for knowledge. This is a particular representation: an academic produces an idea, and that idea is taken up by non-academics and is so deeply appreciated by people who want the answer to the question that the academic has answered. This is deeply frustrating for those who argue that this is not an accurate representation of how knowledge is created — that for every shining superstar there is a constellation of other people who do their own bit in the process. So that is the first persona I wanted to present to you, perhaps the best known.

The second persona is the convener. And the convener is someone who really has an ability to understand a field and make it legible for those outside of academia. They are perhaps drawn into policy or implementation processes because of their ability to make things legible.That might be in critical social science, going back perhaps to something we did about the rights-based approach to development. It includes within it three or four sub-approaches, all of which are quite distinct. In more practical forms of knowledge, in the field in which I work, it might be around how you can solve, for example, a sanitation challenge. You might have sewers, you might have simplified sewers, you might have septic tanks, et cetera.They are appreciated by people who want that legibility in the way academic debates are being formed. The classic picture here — which you’re missing — is a picture of a table, of course, because the classic representation of that would be when you're asked to put together a meeting for a policy implementation agency, and you pick two or three people who can represent different ideas and have that debate.

They are also frustrating. They’re appreciated by people who want that legibility, but they are frustrating for those who think they have something unique, but who remain unrecognised by the particular convener academic who is articulating the field. So that is the second persona.

The third persona is perhaps the least recognised. The third persona is the subversive persona. So the third persona, I would say, let me explain it, and then let me make a comment on it. The third persona are those somewhat outside of academia who are frustrated by the way in which academics convey, act, and think about a field. They want to compete in the marketplace for ideas, representing academia in some sense as a marketplace for those ideas. So they join the academic world and they gradually feed in their ideas into the academic world. They gain greater credibility for them. They may stay in academia, or they may move back to a more overtly political position, or they might join some other organisation. They are appreciated by the constituency they represent with their subversive ideas. They are very frustrating to other academics who think there should be more objectivity, with a positivist understanding of social science, and some desire that academics abstract themselves from their own ideological preferences.

The fourth personality is what I call the collaborative co-producer. The collaborative co-producer is something that has grown in significance, I think you could say, over the last ten years. I think the collaborative co-producer builds on a much longer tradition in academia of participatory research, people who have always had very strong collaborative engagement with non-academics. The collaborative co-producer is anxious to work with, and research with, and write with people who are non-academics. So they represent a distinct trajectory of how to engage non-academics.

I think in the last ten years, you’ve seen a distinctive rise in the number of references to co-production of knowledge and the ways in which this might take place. Going back about ten years, there was a very interesting interchange. The N8 — those of you who are familiar with groupings of universities may know the N8 — it’s a grouping of northern universities.They had a discussion about co-production. There was someone there from the city of Sheffield who talked about how, in the past, academics used to come and interview her, take her best ideas, and represent them as their own in papers. And how, with the REF impact studies, they still did that, but they wanted her to write a letter to say how appreciative she was that they had taken her ideas and put them in their academic paper. Well now, this senior local government administrator should be satisfied, because under collaborative co-production she would be recognised as a co-author. Not so frustrating to many.

I actually do think sometimes the non-academics are frustrated with how their work is used and represented in collaborative co-production. But they are generally modest in their aspirations and appreciative that they are allowed to co-author. But generally there is a little bit of unevenness in how voices are represented.

So the final persona, which I feel a bit bad about, sorry guys for this one, is the shape-shifter. The shape-shifters are those who take secondments outside of academia.

I think we’ve all seen the options go through where you have funding opportunities: you can go and work perhaps for an NGO, you can work in the private sector, you can work for local government. You may be part-time, you may have a secondment of a year or two years. So there are a whole range now of options around dipping your toe, as an academic, into the non-academic world.

This, I’m hesitating because, in my experience, this varies hugely. Where people go and what they bring differs a lot. So in some contexts, they really go and work for the agency, doing agency work and applying their expertise and capabilities. In other cases, they really carry on as an academic but share the academic world with the place they have landed. So there is very little consistency, in my experience, around those kinds of secondments, those kinds of shape-shifting roles. Generally, I would say they seem to be appreciated. Academics are generally positive about the time they spend out of academia. Non-academic institutions, again based on my experience, are generally positive. They are frustrating if that dialogue is not done well — if the relationship is not worked out at the beginning. So sometimes there is a mismatch of expectations that has to be resolved during those periods of part-time or full-time secondment.

I wanted to say a few things by way of conclusion. So firstly, I would say that very few academics are simply one persona in their impact work. Most academics shift a little bit between roles. In my view, they may not shift very deliberately, they respond to opportunities and invitations that come up. So one point is: don’t try to match yourself into just one of my five categories. You would be unusual if you fit neatly into one category.

I think secondly, of course, this is a bit of a simplification. Think of it as a device to understand the ways in which the academic world interfaces with the non-academic world.

Thirdly, I would say that I have deliberately said very little about the ideology that academics bring to these roles. In my experience, you can find examples across an ideological spectrum. You might say many academics are on the left, and I think that’s true, but there are some really prominent examples of more right-wing academics who have taken on these impact roles.

Finally, maybe with a bit of imagination, all of these can play into REF impact case studies, especially as the REF impact model has evolved to be slightly more sophisticated. I would say if you go back about two REF cycles ago, it was more strongly represented by that shining superstar model, but I think that has shifted.

-------

Helen Underhill:

So thank you again to Smith and Ellie for being here to reflect on Diana's presentation that she gave as part of Transformation Lab Week. I'm just going to open up with a first initial question about just immediate responses or reactions. I know you were both in the session on that day, and we had a really great discussion afterwards. There was a lot of interest in the room. What were your immediate responses or reactions? I'll hand it out. 

Elisa Gambino: 

So I really enjoyed the conversation on the day. There was a real buzz about it. And I think what stood out to me the most was really this point that kept coming back around who is included and, as a consequence, who gets excluded, which voices are being amplified and which are not by the different personas. And it also made me think a lot about like how does one become or embody one persona or another, right? So how much of it is by choice? How much do academics set out to become a specific persona? And how much is it, by circumstance, right, so the spaces that you find yourself in, the collaborators that one has. And whether it is perhaps our disciplinary, political, but sometimes even personal inclinations and characteristics that really guide academics towards one or the other persona or a combination of the different ones. 

Smith Ouma:

Yeah, indeed. I think just being there and listening to the reflections, the vast, the reflections from Dana's vast experience, working across the different spaces, both in academia and also a lot with civil society organisations, it got me reflecting. And I mean, this is something that oftentimes as academics, we don't get that chance to step back from and reflect on what kinds of... Positionalities or personas we occupy and how these changes with our engagements and interactions with different actors and in different spaces of collaboration. So for me that was a very insightful presentation and I mean all the other presentations during the transformation lab week and I've increasingly been moving into these spaces of collaborations with these in mind, trying to think about how I'm positioned in that space, how I view myself in that place, how I’m also viewed by my collaborators in those spaces of collaboration or those spaces or engagement. So it was a very insightful presentation. 

Helen Underhill:

Yeah, thank you. And it's really interesting to reflect on how we're viewed as academics and you've both kind of touched on the perceptions of academics within the kind of broader context, whether you reveal your politics or the extent to which you do that. So I wonder if any of the personas stand out as particularly necessary in the current global moment? Is there one kind of particular way of being or a combination that you think is really important today? 

Smith Ouma: 

Yeah, indeed, I think with the current, I will call them, polytunities in light of the presentation that we had recently had at the GDI conference, with the multiple opportunities that are presented themselves in the current moment of academia. I think all these different personas are relevant because we still need that shining superstar, somebody who will be able to you know, engage with a range of actors across different domains and to represent the traditional academic or how academics have been traditionally viewed. We still need people to engage with policy actors, so the role of the convener still remains very important because a lot of the issues that we are facing at the moment require, you know sort of point to that is engagement between policy and practice.

So we still need those individuals who are able to make the work of academics legible to communities of knowledge beyond the academia. And more relevant ones that I think are very necessary at the moment are the subversive persona and also the collaborative co-producer. And this has come a lot with the current moment where we find that universities are going through a lot of challenges, you know, from the hollowing out of the ethical commitments that our universities have been known to stand for, from the highly competitive spaces that we are currently subjected to, particularly as early-career academics who have to sort of... In a way sometimes do away with that radical persona that some of us embody so that you can conform with what the university systems or what the universities structures have set out. So we still need that subversive persona, but saying this, acknowledging the present constraints within our systems, you know, that the neoliberal university has left very little room for the university to be a site for subversion and just take an example of how we structure our classes here. If you want to invite some other communities of knowledge beyond academics, if you want to invite activists into our spaces, our classes for instance, the layers of bureaucracy that you have to go through to be able to do that… So, I think that kind of persona is still very necessary to remind ourselves as academics of our intellectual commitments and our commitments to the communities of knowledge and the society that we engage in. 

Elisa Gambino:

I couldn't agree more. I think especially on this point around the subversive persona, I think it is ever important. It does stand very close to what universities were born to do, but I think its also very important to challenge some of the mainstream understandings of what development is and how it happens and how development practice unfolds. I think it's very, very important now, especially in the context also of aid cuts and kind of like a streamlining of how development funding is disbursed and used. And I think one person that really never stopped being relevant and will never stop being relevant is the collaborative co-producer, right? And there is where inherent power dynamics around collaborations are. Very, very important in terms of needing to be at the center of our own reflection. But I think this is the one that is centered around working with communities, with policymakers, and co-designing, co-researching, co-authoring, right? And it has been very, very significant, it has grown in significance, but of course the question remains of who has been driving the rise of prominence of collaborative work, right? Is it a response to the needs and wants of the communities and policymakers we work with, or is it a response to the change in funding landscape and evaluation metrics of universities and university research in the global north? 

Smith Ouma: 

Yeah, indeed. I think what Ellie mentions is very relevant. And I mean, we find this increasingly that this corporate logic now inform the vast majority of the structures and systems within the university, including funding, including what is fundable and what is not. And oftentimes, there is a sort of push to conform to this corporate logic. So even when we talk about co-production, when we talk about impact, you know, we need to re-evaluate the drive behind these kinds of initiatives so that we remain rooted to that idea that the university should be a space for radical thinking, a space where different communities of knowledge can come together and, you know, produce knowledge in ways that are transformative to the societies around us. 

Helen Underhill: 

Yeah, fantastic. You've already started to touch on this. I'm wondering if we can pick up on the idea, the fact your status as early career academics, early career researchers. You've started to talk about the context of universities at the moment and some of the constraints or the pressures. So do you think that there are any of the personas that are more or less possible in the early stage of your career or more or less important to commit to in this current moment. 

Elisa Gambino: 

Well, I think the way that the current academic system is structured is, especially for early career researchers, is all centered around having very short contracts, precarity. There's a very strong pressure around outputs and also very competitive funding, right? And I think this pushes or steers a lot of early career researchers towards impact that is both fast, so it happens in the span of these very short contracts that we have, but also that is legible to the funders themselves. And so I think there's a very inherent risk with this that we end up having a generation of researchers that is ideally and personally striving for the persona such as the collaborative co-producer or the subversive persona, but end up being constrained by what is legible and visible to the constraints of northern-based funders and policy audiences in the UK or in the broader European context, rather than being centered around what are the questions, the issues and the challenges that policymakers and communities are facing and are interested in addressing in collaborations with academics. 

Smith Ouma: 

Yeah, indeed. I think the aspiration to be a shining superstar is not just a preserve of well-established academics, but also as early career academics, we have that aspiration to be the shining superstar, to produce that four or five star paper. But then, you're very quickly humbled by the reviewers and the review process. But then that, you know, just staying grounded to that ambition, that aspiration is important, as Ellie says. But early career academics, we’re often caught up in these structures that I mentioned before, structures within the university, and this aspiration of upward mobility, that has to operate within the structures of the university. And the structures of the university will often act to co-opt radical academics. So you may start off with these radical ideas, radical ambitions, but then in some spaces, these may be co-opted. And this takes different forms. It takes the form, for instance, of the layered bureaucracies within the universities, the layers of decision-making within our systems, You know, it can sometimes can play the role of the actors' tools for sifting out, you know, the radical academics leading to intellectual conformity, but I think as early academics it can be difficult to strike a balance between these different personas due to the nature and the demands of the spaces that we occupy. But I think as long as we remain committed to the communities of knowledge that we engage with and this idea of producing research that is relevant, research that speaks to the needs and priorities of the communities that we engage with, then I think there's still space in academia for early career academics. 

Helen Underhill: 

Yeah, thank you. And you're starting to hint there at the role that the early career researcher, the early career academic can actually have in co-creating and co-designing knowledge and processes of research that can actually be transformative. So I wonder if any of these personas or perhaps any other ideas of personas you think have a particular resonance with shifting power with research that is around critical thinking meets social justice and what that does in the world? The kind of transformative work. So are there any personas that stand out as being particularly necessary for research to lead to transformation? 

Elisa Gambino: 

I think, very honestly, in a way I wished that I could resonate more clearly with one. I think it would help me to sometimes feel a bit less out of depth in the kind of impact work that I'm now working on with collaborators in Ghana. And I think personally that something that has been guiding me in some of these questions and kind of doubts as well is something that Diana said in another event, so maybe people should listen to that one as well. And she was talking about how the work with non-academic actors should be centered around shared questions and priorities and issues, which is something that both Smith and I were discussing just now, but how trust is central to these collaboration processes. And this is not just trust in the collaborators, but trust in these institutions and the people that we work with as academics. And I think she also encourages us early career researchers to make the most of the opportunities that we are very lucky and privileged to have in engaging with practitioners and seeing these opportunities as a learning opportunity, right? And more often these can be even just learning about processes and procedures that are applied in undertaking development projects and programmes. Sometimes it's about learning how to cooperate with people that have very different jobs to the one that we have, but also about how to disentangle different disciplinary languages, policy and academic languages. And I think these are crucial processes and that really can hinder or support the impact of the collaborative work that we had under way. So I think that's, yeah, I don't know if I resonate with one more specifically, Maybe a combination of a few, but I resonate with the overall idea of the work, the time, the effort and the trust that needs to be built collaboratively in these forms of engagement. 

Smith Ouma: 

Yeah, it's a difficult question, but I think for me, I will say my work has been defined more by the collaborations that I had with social movements and community groups. So I will say the collaborative co-producer is one persona that highly resonates with my work, my present work, and also the work that I've done across the years. I also view myself as a scholar activist. I don't know if that will place me in the subversive category or still in the collaborative co-producer category, but I think you can still be subversive and come out with this shining idea, you know, and present it to the world. You can still be a convener, be a subversive convener. And it is in these engagements or these spaces that I view myself, I think. What drives my work, or what I keep reminding myself of at every point, is the centrality of action. That my work as a scholar-activist should be driven, or should, you know... Action should be central to it, and what this means is that as an academic, I need to place myself in the decisive arena of action, right, so that my work does not remain obstructed from the specific demands of the communities that I engage with and their lived realities. This requires engaging with what Ellie has mentioned, understanding that these kinds of collaborations or approaching these collaborations as lifelong commitments. And adopting that kind of orientation allows us to be reflexive, to reflect on our engagements within these spaces, to reflect in our contributions. To reflect on our biases and help us remain grounded and humble even as we engage with these diverse communities of knowledge. So I think approaching these spaces or approaching our work as a lifelong commitment to these communities of knowledge and these collaborators that we work with is important and within these spaces, the spaces that we create or the spaces that we're invited into, ensuring that we remain accountable in our work. Within these spaces we remain accountable to the communities that we engage with. Yeah, I think those are some of the sorts of things that I keep reflecting on even as I view myself moving between these different spaces or these different personas. 

Helen Underhill: 

Fantastic, thank you. So there's a lot more that we could talk about. Just in one kind of final reflection, are there kind of other personas that you think that we should or could consider? Are there any other elements of who we are as academics and how we work in order to produce that work or co-produce that work that is potentially transformative and really looks at power and structures and systems and changing those. Is there any kind of element of a persona that you think, this is something that I think we could also reflect upon? 

Elisa Gambino: 

I think what Smith just talked about is the starting point of my somewhat proposed new category of persona, this idea of the long life commitment and the time that is needed to build collaborations that are effectively collaborative, not just in name. And I think one that I would like to propose, but I don't know. Maybe it's just a step towards the collaborative co-producer, rather, is the one of the interlocutor. So there's someone who is around a lot that ends up discussing ideas, thoughts, and procedures, sometimes maybe a draft bill or something like that, but in a very informal way. There's no plan for formal collaborations, no expectation of formal collaborations. Almost like a critical friend, really. And I think it's a very important part of trust building, but also as our role as researchers, right? It's not just about the paper or the policy recommendations or the workshop, but sometimes it's just about engaging with the people we collaborate with and we work with on a regular basis, sometimes just for a chat around an idea someone has. And that's just as far as it goes. But I think the idea of the interlocutor resonates with something that Sam, our head of institute, said, and so this idea of having a distinction between large-scale policy impacts, the type of impact that requires political coalitions to be on board and a certain type of visibility that maybe the rock star or the superstar persona has, and the more granular, bureaucratic, or administrative impact of how development programmes are implemented, right? And that, I think, is the one that happens with ongoing dialogue, with collaborations, with people that are implementing programmes and policies. And so I think the interlocutor kind of lives in this second space. And so it's perhaps less translatable into academic metrics. But I think it's something that can make a tangible impact in the kind of like equal footing that this informal engagement takes place. There's no pressure, there's no expectation, so maybe the transformative part of it is in the fact that there are no pressures and no expectations 

Smith Ouma: 

Yeah, indeed. I don't know if this category resonates more with the last category that Diana discussed, that is a shape-shifter, or whether it is a whole different category, but I mean, I look at academics who spend the large or the vast majority of their time outside spaces that are predominantly occupied by academics. Are not necessarily doing what will be perceived, you know, in the traditional sense as academic work, but just being what Ellie said, you know, acting as a critical friend to the range of collaborators, a range of communities, a range of friends outside these academic spaces that we engage with. So I don't know how to really describe that person, that person who sort of, you know, acts as a comrade to you know other individuals that do not occupy these spaces that are dominated by academics and act as that sort of like bouncing board of ideas. A sort of person who, you know, acts as the person who helps you hold yourself accountable as sort of an accountability mechanism. So I don't really have a name for this but it's something beyond a shape shifter because they don't necessarily occupy formal spaces outside academia but they occupy spaces that are important and that are ultimately useful in the ways or to the ways that we view our work as academics or that are useful for shaping the ideas that we engage with within academia. 

Helen Underhill:

I love that. Thank you, both of you. That final point, Smith, makes me think about one of the roles that I have heard that's come up within the kind of impact and engagement space which is of a weaver, which is this kind of persona that brings people together to enable them to feel that they can engage and reflect, and as an educator. And all their work is grounded in learning for social change and learning for social justice, that weaving of ideas, opening up space. That's what we're trying to do at the lab, and you've kind of reminded me of a persona that, for me, isn't necessarily spoken about as a persona, but is very much a term about how we actually facilitate critical thinking and reflective practice, for us all to move our work forward, so. Thank you so much for such thoughtful and generous reflections. I really appreciate your time. 

It's interesting to come back to Diana's final point around about not identifying with one particular persona and how perhaps one of the things around shape shifting is also being able to adapt these different personas at different times. And that's how we truly can build collaboration because at some point you might need to take a very different role with one group that you work with compared to in another space and that is one of the other demands of already a very demanding role. So I really appreciate you reflecting on your work and offering some of your reflections about who you are as an academic and how that's developing. I hope that you, our listeners, have enjoyed this slightly different approach to sharing the presentations from Transformation Lab Week and give us a virtual thank you again to Smith and Ellie for such a warm and generous reflection. So, we will see you again soon.