Glossary: Language for Relational Research
Words That Bridge Academic Rigor and Community Wisdom
This glossary offers working definitions for the key concepts that appear throughout the 5 Key Research Insights and broader fellow reflections during the Center for IRH’s 10-week transdisciplinary summer graduate research fellowship that took place during Summer 2025. (Want to learn more about the program? Click here.)
Think of these not as fixed academic terminology but as living language—tools that can help you articulate relational practices you may already use or frameworks that open new ways of thinking about community-engaged work.
How to Use This Glossary
If you're a community practitioner: You might recognize these concepts even if you've never used these specific words. The glossary can help you put language to intuitive work you already do—useful when writing grant proposals, explaining your approach to partners, or demanding better collaboration from researchers.
If you're a researcher: These terms offer methodological vocabulary for relational approaches that complement traditional academic frameworks. Use them to articulate dimensions of community-engaged scholarship that conventional research language often misses.
If you're a funder: This glossary clarifies the conceptual foundations underlying the fellowship's recommendations. Understanding these terms will help you evaluate proposals and develop grant criteria that genuinely support relational research infrastructure.
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The unseen/hidden/veiled knowledge in Islamic tradition—understanding that some forms of knowledge exist but remain beyond what can be directly observed or measured.
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One person's willingness to show up authentically creates space for others to do the same, building collective capacity for genuine connection.
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A collaborative inquiry process that emphasizes shared power in knowledge creation, where all participants contribute their perspectives and insights to generate understanding together.
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An important recognition that some differences cannot be directly translated or fully understood across different lived experiences, yet these very differences create conditions for deeper integration and growth.
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A framework that understands health, healing, and wellbeing as emerging from the quality of relationships—between people, within communities, across systems, and with the more-than-human world.
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How individuals navigate between their languages of origin (cultural, disciplinary, experiential) and academic discourse, recognizing translation itself as an interpretive act.
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The empathetic behavioral analysis and observation of people in community spaces—approaching difference with openness rather than judgment.
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A recursive spiraling approach that shifts from fragmented mental health models to holistic relational health by holding what is often incommensurate and incommensurable in productive tension, pursuing engagement, understanding, and change through safe, deep, intentional practice.
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The practice of transforming potential barriers into opportunities for connection and deeper reflection, anticipating needs rather than simply reacting to challenges.
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A dynamic that emerges when safety, trust, and intentionality create space for genuine disagreement, discomfort, and exploration—leading to deeper collaboration and collective knowledge generation rather than conflict or avoidance.
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Positioning oneself as a learner-leader who invites others into shared inquiry rather than extracting knowledge, recognizing mutual responsibility in research relationships.
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A competency that includes emotional and somatic languages alongside verbal communication—attending to body language, energy shifts, silence, and unspoken dynamics in addition to words.
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Recognizing that even in unfamiliar terrain, there are traces of home in how we listen, how we ask, and how we make sense together—being present to another's experience without trying to fix, explain, or translate it prematurely.