“At the heart of community-engaged research is a focus on relationships – relationships between people, institutions, places and knowledge (to name a few). Community-engaged research is a framework or approach to research that is especially founded on sustainable, trusting and equitable relationships between researchers and communities.”

"Community-engaged research is an emergent practice that is predicated on building trust and taking risks. It often requires that we let go of our expectations and allow the unexpected to happen in ways that require patience, openness, humility and a sensitivity to what the community needs.”

Mahoney, Grain, Fraser, and Wong, Community Resource Handbook (Links to an external site.), p. 15 and 6, emphasis added

Community-engaged research (CER) departs from typical relationships to knowledge-building and expertise in academia and university-based research projects. Rather than presuming the expertise of academic researchers, community-engaged research:

Involves university researchers working collaboratively with members of a community (defined as a group of people who share a common interest or experience) to develop and share knowledge, and often to devise solutions or strive to change policies or practices.
Values relationship-building as being equally important - perhaps even more important - than research outcomes.
Strives to work across (even subvert) academic power structures to empower community-members as the holders of expert knowledge, and often works to co-create understandings of ethical practice in consultation with community members, rather than imposing ethical parameters and understandings from academic culture that may not make sense in the community's culture.
Particularly when working with equity-seeking ("marginalized") communities, CER strives to centre the voices of those facing the greatest forms of impact or oppression.
Often uses interactive, participatory research methods like surveys, focus groups, semi-structured interviews, or communal artistic projects. Music and other arts-based initiatives are often especially helpful for breaking down power dynamics and barriers, and empowering individuals to share their lived experience in a safe environment.
Is organized around the central goal and outcome of benefiting the community and its members. As a result, publication and knowledge-sharing tends to take place outside of (or in addition to) traditional academic publishing, instead foregrounding knowledge-sharing in ways that directly benefit and include the community itself.

This video (Links to an external site.) by Katie Laqua offers an excellent introduction (though if the graphic changed to show members of the community and members of the academy standing together rather than apart, it would be even more representative of the goals of the work!)