We engage with a broad and diverse group of partners in our work, including researchers, policymakers, governments, parliamentarians, people with lived experience of modern slavery, businesses, civil society and many others.
Why is partnership so important to us?
Collaboration is one of our central values and is essential to the Modern Slavery PEC’s mission, as outlined in our strategy. We work with partners because we believe it is the best way to enhance the understanding of modern slavery and to transform the effectiveness of laws and policies designed to overcome it.
We firmly believe that collaboration is essential to generating the best evidence. By bringing together organisations and individuals that may have different knowledge, experiences and perspectives, we aim to help new thinking about modern slavery to emerge, giving rise to new solutions.
Modern slavery is a complex problem, with many different dimensions. It is essential that we work in diverse and inclusive partnerships if we are to overcome it.
Partnership underpins two of the Modern Slavery PEC’s strategic objectives:
- To facilitate new collaborations in modern slavery research between those who have not previously worked together, and
- To build and sustain a ‘network of networks’ of people who produce evidence on the best ways of addressing modern slavery and those who might use this evidence to build the most effective laws, policies and practices.
Partnership principles
We approach partnerships with a set of key values in mind:
- Equality, diversity and inclusion, particularly through involving people with lived experience of modern slavery and managing uneven power dynamics between partners;
- Transparency: we are open about what our priorities and objectives are;
- Collaboration: we aim to work closely with others, learning from them and building on the progress they have already made;
- Stakeholder engagement: we consult regularly and widely on our research priorities; we actively seek feedback on our our ways of working;
- Reciprocity: we expect our partners to commit to these values in their engagement with us;
- Joint learning: we and our partners commit to sharing knowledge and learning;
How do we build partnerships?
- We structure our research calls to encourage collaboration between academic researchers and a diverse mix of practitioners, policymakers, non-academic researchers and people with lived experience of modern slavery.
- We consult widely on our research priorities.
- We work in collaboration to promote the work of our partners, ensuring that it reaches appropriate audiences and has the greatest possible impact on decision-making.
- We host roundtable discussions where we bring together groups of people with common interests to consider shared challenges and evidence needs. For example, this could mean bringing together researchers working on similar themes to make connections and discuss the best ways of developing research in this area, or bringing together businesses to discuss the evidence gaps around what works in addressing forced labour in supply chains.
- We work to build and strengthen partnerships with key organisations across the anti-slavery sector, so that we can learn from and amplify established good practice, align with existing initiatives, and ensure we are as inclusive as possible in our own work.
- We host a Google Group mailing list, which is a free and open space for conversations between researchers, practitioners and other people working on modern slavery. You can join the Google Group using the link at the bottom of this page and here.
- We invite anyone who is interested to propose ideas for research for the Modern Slavery PEC to fund. You can submit ideas via our simple online form.
Get in touch
We would love to hear from you directly to talk about how we could collaborate. Please contact Owain Johnstone, Partnerships Manager (o.johnstone@modernslaverypec.org). We welcome approaches from organisations or individuals who are interested in working with us, including in ways not listed here.
