Dialogue Incubator participants Boudewijn Goos & Arjen de Wit. Boudewijn and Arjen conduct research on social assistance, paid and unpaid work, and livelihood security. Together with fellow researchers, people with lived experience, municipal professionals, and representatives of the Dutch Social Assistance Union, they established a think tank to address questions surrounding the Dutch Participation Act. Through the Dialogue Incubator, they explored how research can become more closely connected to the people it is ultimately intended to serve.
Why dialogue?
From the very beginning, Boudewijn and Arjen pursued two ambitions simultaneously: making their research more socially meaningful while also improving the quality of the research itself.
"We could write another hundred papers on social assistance, but if only the academic community reads them, they have little value."
Together with researchers, people with lived experience, municipal professionals and representatives of the Social Assistance Union, they created a think tank focused on issues surrounding the Participation Act. This brought together people with very different experiences, interests and responsibilities. As a result, the meetings required careful facilitation.
"There are many political sensitivities among the participants that you have to take into account. [...] The devil is in the details when it comes to facilitation."
Dialogue in practice
Through the Dialogue Incubator, Arjen and Boudewijn explored how dialogue within the think tank should be designed. Central questions included representation: who should be invited, and how do you prevent some participants from dominating the conversation?
The same challenge also applied to themselves: "How do you ensure that, as a researcher, you don't take over the conversation and instead genuinely respond to the needs of the participants?"
Initially, Boudewijn and Arjen intended to use the think tank to develop a new research agenda. However, after the very first dialogue session, their focus shifted. "We realised that we already know a great deal. People with lived experience describe the problems, and researchers respond by saying: we've already studied that."
During the think tank process, they discovered that creating societal change requires more than producing knowledge alone. "We started asking ourselves how else we could mobilise this group to make a broader contribution."
The think tank subsequently established several working groups and developed a manifesto aimed at exerting more direct influence on policy discussions surrounding the Participation Act.
What did it achieve?
The programme fundamentally changed how Boudewijn and Arjen see their role as researchers. The Dialogue Incubator provided practical tools, guidance and support. "It has become an important part of how I want to position myself as a researcher, and of reflecting on how I can genuinely create greater societal impact through my work."
For Boudewijn and Arjen, societal impact does not begin once the research has been completed. It begins during the conversations in which researchers and stakeholders jointly make sense of knowledge.
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Author: Anna Aris
