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Evidence-based policing (EBP) by its original definition is “the use of the best available research on the outcomes of police work to implement guidelines and evaluate agencies, units, and officers.” Since then, the definition of EBP has been evolving, with academics adjusting the definition to better fit how police and researchers apply research in the field. EBP is best described as an approach to law enforcement and public safety. It involves the application of empirical research, scientific methods, and data-driven decision-making to policing practices, strategies, and policies. The term “evidence-based” is borrowed from the field of medicine and has been adapted to various disciplines, including education, social work, and, in this case, policing. An EBP approach emphasizes the following: 1. Use of research and data: Implementing strategies and practices shown to be effective through rigorous research. 2. Evaluation and adaptation: Continuously assessing the effectiveness of policing methods and making adjustments based on empirical evidence. 3. Scientific methodology: Applying the principles of scientific inquiry to test the effectiveness of different policing strategies. EBP is a practical approach that integrates scientific research into police work to improve outcomes, decision-making, and policy development in law enforcement. This approach has slowly begun to create a shift in both academics’ and practitioners’ points of view. When a paradigm shift occurs in a scientific discipline, there is always a period before the shift occurs where the definitions and parameters of the discipline are ambiguous. A paradigm shift refers to a fundamental change in the underlying assumptions or dominant methodologies within a given scientific discipline or more broadly in any intellectual field or approach. This concept was popularized by philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn in his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Paradigm shifts can initially face resistance until the new paradigm becomes widely accepted and mainstream. In essence, a paradigm shift is not just a small modification or improvement, but a complete overhaul of the foundational principles and methods in a particular field, leading to a new way of thinking and understanding. As EBP developed from evidence-based medicine, it has followed the same developmental trajectory of changes in definition and application, resistance to adoption, advocates and critics of the approach, and the development of societies to assist with incorporation of practices by police departments. EBP is different from other disciplines such as criminology or crime science, as the core of EBP is to use rigorous research methodologies to test policing practices in the field. The reason for this approach is to determine whether policing practices “work” under real-life circumstances rather than just theoretically. Additionally, EBP advocates argue that rigorous testing is a better approach to serving the public than having officers use anecdotes to drive practices. EBP is an approach that not all academics or practitioners agree with, but it is one way of determining the causal effects of a policing practice.

Beginning with phone calls to an emergency psychiatric hospital and suicide prevention center, the roots of Conversation Analysis (CA) are embedded in systematic analyses of routine problems occurring between ordinary persons facing troubling health challenges, care providers, and the institutions they represent. After more than 50 years of research, CA is now a vibrant and robust mode of scientific investigation that includes close examination of a wide array of medical encounters between patients and their providers. Considerable efforts have been made to overview CA and medicine as a rapidly expanding mode of inquiry and field of research. Across a span of 18 years, we sample from 10 of these efforts to synthesize important priorities and findings emanating from CA investigations of diverse interactional practices and health care institutions. Key topics and issues are raised that provide a unique opportunity to identify and track the development and maturity of CA approaches to medical encounters. Attention is also given to promising new modes of research, and to the potential and challenges of improving medical practices by translating basic and rigorous empirical findings into innovative interventions for medical education. A case is made that increasing reliance on CA research can positively impact training and policies shaping the delivery of humane and quality medical care.

Collaborative research has a critical role to play in furthering our understanding of African politics. Many of the most important and interesting questions in the field are difficult, if not impossible, to tackle without some form of collaboration, either between academics within and outside of Africa—often termed North–South research partnerships—or between those researchers and organizations from outside the academic world. In Africa in particular, collaborative research is becoming more frequent and more extensive. This is due not only to the value of the research that it can produce but also to pressures on the funding of African scholars and academics in the Global North, alongside similar pressures on the budgets of non-academic collaborators, including bilateral aid agencies, multilateral organizations, and national and international non-government organizations. Collaborative projects offer many advantages to these actors beyond access to new funding sources, so they constitute more than mere “marriages of convenience.” These benefits typically include access to methodological expertise and valuable new data sources, as well as opportunities to increase both the academic and “real-world” impact of research findings. Yet collaborative research also raises a number of challenges, many of which relate to equity. They center on issues such as who sets the research agenda, whether particular methodological approaches are privileged over others, how responsibility for different research tasks is allocated, how the benefits of that research are distributed, and the importance of treating colleagues with respect despite the narrative of “capacity-building.” Each challenge manifests in slightly different ways, and to varying extents, depending on the type of collaboration at hand: North–South research partnership or collaboration between academics and policymakers or practitioners. This article discusses both types of collaboration together because of their potential to overlap in ways that affect the severity and complexity of those challenges. These challenges are not unique to research in Africa, but they tend to manifest in ways that are distinct or particularly acute on the continent because of the context in which collaboration takes place. In short, the legacy of colonialism matters. That history not only shapes who collaborates with whom but also who does so from a position of power and who does not. Thus, the inequitable nature of some research collaborations is not simply the result of oversights or bad habits; it is the product of entrenched structural factors that produce, and reproduce, imbalances of power. This means that researchers seeking to make collaborative projects in Africa more equitable must engage with these issues early, proactively, and continuously throughout the entire life cycle of those research projects. This is true not just for researchers based in the Global North but for scholars from, or working in, Africa as well.