Co-production for or against the university: student loneliness and the commodification of impact in COVID-19

Purpose This paper explores the dissonance between co-production and expectations of impact in a research project on student loneliness over the 2019/2020 academic year. Specific characteristics of the project - the subject matter, interpolation of a global respiratory pandemic, informal systems of care that arose among students and role of the university in providing the context and funding for the research - brought co-production into heightened tension with the instrumentalisation of project outputs. Design/methodology/approach The project consisted of a series of workshops, research meetings and mixed-methods online journalling between 2019 and 2020. This paper is primarily a critical reflection on that research, based on observations by and conversations between the authors, together with discourse analysis of research data. Findings The authors argue that co-producing research with students on university contexts elevates existing tensions between co-production and institutional valuations of impact, that co-production with students who had experienced loneliness made necessary space for otherwise absent support and care, that the responsibility to advocate for evidence and co-researchers came into friction with how the university felt the research could be useful and that each of these converging considerations are interconnected symptoms of the ongoing marketisation of HE. Originality/value This paper provides a novel analysis of co-production, impact and higher education in the context of an original research project with specific challenges and constraints. It is a valuable contribution to methodological literatures on co-production, multidisciplinary research into student loneliness and reflexive work on the difficult uses of evidence in university contexts.

Automated summary

This paper explores the discord between co-production and impact expectations in a research project on student loneliness, highlighting the tensions between collaborating with students and institutional valuations of impact. The study found that co-producing research with students in university contexts elevated existing tensions between co-production and institutional valuations of impact, while also providing necessary space for absent support and care.