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Community and the Academy: Navigating patient and public engagement in graduate research

Date(s)
Nov. 17, 2026 (noon – 1 p.m.)
Location
Online/Virtual

Event Description

This panel discussion on patient and public engagement is focused on grad students: how to build trust, navigate ethics, funding, and competing academic priorities.

Event Host(s)

  • CHI's Public & Patient Engagement Team

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Overview

Meaningfully engaging patients, members of the public and communities can strengthen research, but doing so as a graduate student comes with unique opportunities, responsibilities and challenges. Students are often working within limited timelines and budgets while navigating expectations from communities, supervisors, advisory committees, research ethics boards, funders and universities—and what is meaningful to community may not always align neatly with what is required to complete a thesis or degree.

In this panel conversation, researchers and engagement practitioners at different stages of their careers will draw on their experiences to explore how graduate students can build authentic relationships within academic timelines, navigate tensions between community and institutional priorities, advocate for engagement within academic structures, and foreground the knowledge and contributions of community partners while demonstrating their own scholarly contribution. Through real-world examples and common dilemmas, the session will consider relationship-building, ethics, funding and compensation, knowledge sharing, and the sometimes-competing accountabilities of engaged scholarship.

Learning Objectives

  • • Identify opportunities and challenges associated with meaningful patient, public, and community engagement within the constraints of graduate research.
  • • Recognize and navigate competing accountabilities to community partners, supervisors and advisory committees, universities, ethics processes, funders, and degree requirements.
  • • Apply practical strategies for relationship-building, gaining academic support for engagement, navigating research and community ethics, and identifying resources to recognize and compensate community partners.
  • • Consider approaches to knowledge sharing that respond to both academic expectations — such as thesis, conference presentations, and manuscripts—and the priorities and needs of communities.
  • • Reflect on how to foreground community knowledge and expertise while articulating and demonstrating their own scholarly contribution as graduate researchers.