Knowledge Mobilization

Knowledge mobilization emerges from the long tradition of ‘extension’ work of universities and colleges into community settings beyond the boundaries of the campus. Knowledge mobilization is an umbrella concept that includes and builds on the practices described by an assortment of associated terms: dissemination, diffusion, technology transfer, knowledge translation, knowledge management, and other practices focused on spreading the results of research findings to multiple audiences and enhancing the usability of knowledge products, such as reports, papers, books, and lectures, emerging from research and assessed practice. While the term can be found in the adult education literature as early as the mid-1990s, it gained much wider use when adopted by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in 2002, following the evaluation of the Community-University Research Alliance research-funding programme. Subsequent documents at this agency defined knowledge mobilization as a complex set of activities, whose overall objective is to enable those who stand to benefit from research results in the humanities and social sciences—academics, students, policymakers, business leaders, community groups, educators and the media, among others—to have access to knowledge at a level they can use to advance social, economic, environmental and cultural development. This long definition is often shortened to getting the right information, to the right people, at the right time, in the right format, to influence their decision-making and to create new value.

[Page 482]The context out of which the concept of knowledge mobilization arose has meaning for the world of action research. The Canadian federal government’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council created a unique funding window that stipulated joint community and university engagement as a requirement for applying for funds. These Community-University Research Alliance grants were an extraordinary innovation and opportunity at the time for action researchers, for community-based researchers and for engaged scholars whose work with communities consistently involved using knowledge to achieve practical and/or sociopolitical objectives. Action research calls for knowledge not only to be co-created within partnerships but also to be ‘mobilized’—made active in support of the goals of the community partners.

While originally focused on extending and enhancing the value of academic research in the social sciences and humanities, knowledge mobilization has gained wider use in a range of professional practice settings—government departments, hospitals, professional associations and public service agencies seeking to gain greater value from the data and information created, at ever-accelerating rates, within their organizations. Knowledge mobilization is often referred to as a method of coping with the ever-expanding availability of data and information produced in an ever-connected world, by creating enhanced social relationships between available sources of data and information and the needs of users and decision-makers, who require it in more accessible and meaningful formats.