Striving beyond Epistemic Authority: Results Dissemination in Smallholder Irrigation Farming Research

Epistemic authority is the institutional measure of trustworthiness and reliability of our work. Can we really claim, though, that our research is reliable if we do not create spaces for sharing potential societal benefits with the communities we investigate and with which we work? Against this backdrop, I aim to examine the practice of results dissemination and its potential benefits for researched communities. This reflection is produced through the analysis of a ten-day itinerant dissemination workshop that took place in January 2015 between Kenya and Tanzania. Results were presented to local participants through booklets in English, Swahili, and Marakwet. Although societal impact is a long-term process, I discuss some benefits that emerged during the ten-day workshop: seeds exchange, learning of agricultural practices, debating women's exclusion from irrigation, the use of the booklet with results in school, and the transliteration of the spoken language of Marakwet. By giving researchers and participants an occasion for reciprocal learning, dissemination is a cornerstone of responsible geography. Responsible and truly participatory geographers ought to give equal weight to societal and scientific impacts. If we want to be serious about the rising call for geographies of responsibility, I argue, we have to further challenge our disciplinary knowledge production norms and self-bestowed epistemic authority by renewing our engagement with participatory research practices throughout their investigations, until the final stage of results dissemination.