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We often hear about how relationships are essential to initiating collaboration, including research-practice partnerships (RPPs). Yet that raises several key questions. How do these relationships form? And why do some relationships form and not others? Answering these questions is especially important for RPPs given that, oftentimes, researchers and practitioners start off as strangers to one another, and strangers tend to remain strangers if left to their own devices. Adam Seth Levine presents a three-part argument: a new theory on when diverse thinkers choose to engage with each other, evidence testing that theory, and evidence showing how to design new institutions to connect them. The data come from a combination of interviews, a comparative case study, and field experiments, and are part of a forthcoming book on collaboration in civic life.

Adam Seth Levine is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. Many questions pique his interest and excitement. The top ones are: “When do ordinary citizens become engaged in civic and political life, and with what impact?” and “How do diverse people, such as researchers and community leaders, work together to address problems?” He has published research findings addressing these questions in a variety of political science, transportation planning, climate change, communication, law, and economics journals, as well as in one book entitled “American Insecurity,” published by Princeton University Press.

He is deeply committed to broad public engagement. Many of his studies entail formal collaborations with nonprofit organizations, in which they work together to design and carry out research. Thus far he has collaborated with seven nonprofits to conduct research in six countries including the United States, Kenya, Nepal, Mexico, Ecuador, and Vietnam. He regularly gives talks on civic engagement to a wide variety of audiences, including researchers, practitioners, policymakers, students, and grant-makers. Lastly, he is also the president and co-founder of research4impact, a nonprofit that creates powerful new collaborations between researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Since 2018 he has helped create over 300 new collaborations.