Knowledge Democracy

Knowledge democracy rests on the principle that knowledge, in all its diverse forms and expressions, must be accessible and usable for the public good. It recognises that knowledge is produced not only in universities but also in communities, civil society, and social movements, through a range of methods. Respecting this plurality, knowledge democracy calls for open, value-based, and decolonized systems where knowledge is shared freely across borders and generations.

This digital platform is a part of that vision. It brings together the rich legacy of Participatory Research (PR), from its early beginnings in the 1970s to its continued practice today, into an open access repository. By digitizing rare writings, reports, and audio-visual resources scattered across personal archives and institutional libraries, and making them easily searchable and globally accessible, the platform provides a living resource for researchers, students, practitioners, and communities alike.

In line with the global Open Science framework, this platform strengthens the movement toward making knowledge transparent, inclusive, and accessible to all. The repository has been intentionally designed to be easy to navigate and explore. You can browse the Communities section to discover the different themes and areas of work represented in the collection. You can also search the knowledge materials using the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), language, or region to find resources relevant to your interests and context.

This is not a finished archive, but a living and evolving resource that will continue to grow as new histories, experiences, and contributions are brought into the collection. We invite scholars, researchers, practitioners, communities, and institutions to become a part of this movement by contributing their own work and helping to build this shared global resource. If you would like to contribute your work to the repository or learn more about how to do so, please get in touch with us at library@pria.org.

Communities in DSpace

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Recent Submissions

Thumbnail Image
Item
Influencing a global movement: Notes the founding of the Consejo de educacion de adultos de America Latina (CEAAL)
(0000) Hall, Budd L
In this piece, Budd L. Hall recalls how the Consejo de Educación de Adultos de América Latina (CEAAL) came to be founded. He starts with the creation of the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) after the 1972 UNESCO conference in Tokyo, and his own work with the Chilean sociologist Francisco Vio Grossi on a participatory research network. The account then follows the 1979 ICAE meeting in Helsinki, where the decision was made to back Vio Grossi and the popular education movement in organising a Latin American body. It describes the Caracas meeting that led to CEAAL in 1982, and the 1985 World Assembly in Buenos Aires, where CEAAL held its first General Assembly. Hall offers these as personal reflections on the early years.
Thumbnail Image
Item
Call for Afro-centric theory and practice in community based research and engagement closing remarks to African regional conference on university-community partnerships in Dakar, March 25-26, 2011
(2011-03-26) Hall, Budd L
In these closing remarks to the African Regional Conference on University-Community Partnerships, held in Dakar in March 2011, Budd L. Dr. Hall argues that community-based research and engagement have African roots. He opens with a poem, “Creation Song”, and then recalls African thinkers and activists, including Senghor, Cissé, Kane, Diop, Nyerere and Cabral, whose work laid the ground for participatory research. Hall also points to the damage done to African higher education by World Bank policies and by the recruitment of African students into northern universities. He calls for universities in Africa that rest on African history, knowledge and languages, and for an Afro-centric theory and practice of community-based research and engagement.
Thumbnail Image
Item
Imagine/Learning: Thoughts from Two adult educators
(Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, 2014) Hall, Budd L; Clover, Darlene E.
Does it matter where the academic home of the study of adult education is? In this paper we share our reflections on the implications of the institutional location of the discipline of adult education within universities in Canada and elsewhere. We speak of the historic tensions between the less structured and often transformational vision of adult education and the highly regulated learning contexts of schooling, and we suggest adult education theory and practice can be found in many other disciplinary clusters in all our universities. Wherever the formal study for adult education is located, its purpose is always to strengthen capacity for resistance and transformation.
Thumbnail Image
Item
Learning to listen: Foundations of teaching and facilitating of participatory and community based research
(University of Toronto Press, 2014) Hall, Budd L
This chapter by Budd L. Hall was published in Learning and Teaching Community-Based Research: Linking Pedagogy to Practice, edited by Catherine Etmanski and Teresa Dawson. Hall looks back on how he learned and later taught participatory and community-based research (CBR). It draws on his early work in Tanzania in the 1970s, where the evaluation of a health education campaign exposed the limits of conventional survey methods. The chapter outlines five learning objectives: knowing who we are, learning to listen, the centrality of values and commitment, openness to multiple ways of creating and representing knowledge, and the meaning of action. It uses exercises like the Power Flower and poetry to help students listen better. The chapter concludes that CBR is a set of principles rather than a fixed method and that its results should belong to the community.
Thumbnail Image
Item
Inequality, Higher Education and Knowledge Democracy
(Newsletter of Association of Commonwealth Universities, 2020) Hall, Budd L
In this article, published in the Spring 2020 newsletter of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, Budd L. Hall looks at inequality and what it asks of higher education. It begins with the scale of poverty and homelessness in places as different as Victoria and India, and with research by Wilkinson and Pickett showing that both rich and poor fare better in more equal societies. The article then asks what a knowledge democracy movement might look like, drawing on John Gaventa’s idea of a knowledge strategy and on the work of Nyerere and Freire. Such a movement is kept apart from the knowledge economy, community engagement and open access to information, which are treated as supports rather than the movement itself. It closes by asking how community-university partnerships can strengthen knowledge democracy.