Piloting a Centre for Exchange through a capacity-building approach
Project Summary
Our vision is to pilot a Centre for Exchange that challenges hierarchical knowledge systems by ensuring dialogue with dignity among people with lived experience, health researchers, and practitioners. Building on 28 years of participatory practice, it aims to strengthen the capacity of health researchers in inclusive methods while supporting communities, such as sanitation and sex worker collectives, to co-shape health research. Through a series of place-based workshops and methodology labs, participants will co-learn, design and reflect on strategies to make research more inclusive and context-sensitive. The project explores how participatory approaches can build shared ownership and how institutional conditions, such as funding systems and research cultures, shape their adoption. By embedding reflection and collaboration into research practice, the Centre seeks to reimagine knowledge exchange that values lived experience and shared expertise. Aligned with the CfE principles of equity, inclusion, and collaboration, it aims to transform how health research is conceived and practiced for more responsive, community-shaped outcomes.
Organisation Snapshot
Praxis – Institute for Participatory Practices is a non-profit in India that seeks to democratise development processes, making them more inclusive, relevant, and responsive. We focus on people-centred, people-led research that goes beyond tokenistic participation, positioning those most affected as agents of change. By challenging mainstream ideologies that perpetuate systemic inequity, we centre our work on the lived experiences and knowledge of those directly impacted. All Praxis programmes are shaped by local insights, recognising the interplay of power, privilege, and representation, and aiming to transform how knowledge is produced, shared, and applied.
Project Team
Pradeep Narayanan
Advisor
Pradeep is an expert in participatory research and evaluation, with extensive experience in decolonisation, ethics, Business and Human Rights, and Sustainable Development. Over 25 years, he has guided community-led monitoring and participatory action research with marginalised communities, helping translate local knowledge into actionable insights. He co-conceived Sindhanai, a Global South-led initiative on measuring collectivisation. Pradeep also serves as Honorary Fellow at Durham University, on the International Advisory Board of Community Development Journal, the NHRC Core Committee on Business and Human Rights, and convenes Global North Dominance Watch promoting a Just Energy Transition.
Sarah Hyder Iqbal
Advisor
Sarah Hyder Iqbal is an engagement practitioner, researcher and trainer who works to connect science and society and make them matter to each other. She aims to open up science through participatory and creative approaches, supported by innovative and enabling funding models and policies. With experience spanning health research, science communication, public engagement, funding, strategy, and evaluation, she collaborates with institutions, funders, policymakers, creatives, media, scientists, and communities to break silos and make science inclusive, accessible and actionable.
Tarini J Shipurkar
Lead
Tarini is a sociologist with extensive expertise in participatory research, decolonisation, and programmes shaped by local knowledge. Her work focuses on amplifying the perspectives of those most affected by systemic inequities. She has led research, evaluation, and data analysis across diverse settings, including work with de-notified and nomadic tribes, sanitation workers, child labour programmes, and survivor-led leadership projects. She co-conceived Sindhanai, a Global South-led initiative embedding evaluation within collectivisation, and has contributed to several studies exploring the landscape of the evaluation ecosystem.
Nafeesa Khan
Researcher
Nafeesa Khan is a sociologist with a background in Economics and Sociology whose work integrates data analysis with ethnographic inquiry. She focuses on participatory methods informed by a decolonising lens, and has field experience with marginalized communities in areas of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, and the Sundarbans. Driven by a commitment to fostering an equitable and just society, she aims to connect community realities with policy processes, contributing to social change efforts that foreground equity, dignity, and collective agency.
Neha Narayanan
Researcher
Neha works at the intersection of public health, labour rights, and social justice. Her work focuses on addressing inequities among marginalised communities through research, advocacy, and participatory action. With experience in occupational safety, mental health, and business responsibility concerning sanitation workers, she brings a social justice perspective to questions of worker well-being and systemic exclusion. Neha’s work aims to strengthen inclusive, equitable, and rights-based approaches to health and labour policy.