Strategic planning
This document, which incorporates material from the DFM Milestone and Midterm Reports submitted to SSHRC, outlines our progress to date and outlines strategic directions for the second phase of the Dried Fish Matters project.
Achievement summary
In the past three years, the Dried Fish Matters (DFM) partnership has brought together 90 researchers and students, belonging to 12 research teams and three working groups in eleven countries, to study dried fish value chains across South and Southeast Asia. Our research teams have produced 18 reports and working papers, three published or submitted peer-reviewed publications, and over two dozen conference presentations based on the first stages of their research. This work has successfully begun to describe dried fish value chains and helped draw attention to the economic, cultural, and nutritional importance of dried fish in the lives of people across this region.
Our primary research has produced several important findings that will guide our work in the second stage of the project. We have learned, for example, that dried fish production is expanding in Sri Lanka, but corresponding investments are not being made to supply chain management or value addition; that the fishmeal industry in Karnataka is diverting fish away from human consumption, presenting a threat to food and nutrition security; that dried fish from the Bay of Bengal is highly contaminated with microplastics; and that intergenerational transmission of female involvement in dried fish processing in Andhra Pradesh appears to have broken down. We have also discovered evidence of the deep cultural value associated with dried, smoked, and fermented fish around the world. Our exhaustive review of the global literature on dried fish confirms that many of the challenges identified by DFM partners – notably concerning social relations, cultural value, and food and nutrition security – are severely underrepresented in both academic and applied research.
Despite the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the DFM project has succeeded in fostering collaboration across more than 30 partner organizations. Our teams have worked together to produce, for example, an image database and a series of audiovisual documents exploring the cultural and sensorial dimensions of dried fish and have presented at virtual events including the World Ocean Week Small-Scale Fisheries Open House and the MARE "People and the Sea" Conference in 2021. Work toward a collectively authored e-book and digital humanities exhibition is currently underway.
To build capacity across our research teams, we have held a wide variety meetings and workshops, both in-person and online, focusing on research ethics, interview guides, and the use of tools and technologies (Zotero, Atlas.ti, Mediawiki, OpenShot). These events have been well attended by researchers and students alike. We have met our training commitments in Canada and have exceeded expectations in Asia, providing formal and informal opportunities for training and participation in project research to approximately 90 students, research assistants, and support staff.
Research activities
We have successfully generated an initial solid understanding of the nature and extent of dried fish value chains in South and South-East Asia. The first of our two research goals set for the midpoint of this project was to collect, review, and analyze existing literature on dried fish. We exceeded the expected outcomes for this goal, by reviewing a significantly greater number of publications than originally planned – 1130 directly relevant items catalogued from a library of over 3000 publications reviewed by our team – and by investing in the creation of original, open-source tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing metadata within our online library. As recommended by the expert panel, we expanded the reach of our review such that more than half of our resources addressed geographic contexts outside of our primary research areas. While some of our partners have begun cataloguing and digitizing local publications, a combination of technical barriers and lack of access to physical resources during extended lockdowns has limited progress in this area and will require further work in the coming two years.
The second of our research goals was to complete qualitative “scoping” research in six countries. In the first year of the project, through extensive partner consultations and a major workshop in Cox’s Bazar (Bangladesh), we developed a shared research protocol to support the systematic collection and analysis of data on dried fish value chains across this varied region. The protocol included interview guides, recruitment and consent materials, a research ethics handbook, visual documentation guidelines, and other resources to support semi-structured interviews and observational research to be conducted with fishers, processors, wholesalers, retailers, and labourers across the six countries.
This field research got underway in late 2019 but was severely disrupted by the COVID pandemic. Several of our teams could not go to the field at all due to extended lockdowns, or began but were unable to complete their field research; in some cases, researchers or their families experienced illness and death; and up to August 2021 the University of Manitoba Covid Research Response Team declined to authorize in-person field research in South Asia. Our partners adapted to this situation by shifting focus to research that could be completed using secondary sources, collecting new data in collaboration with community-level organizations, or conducting interviews by telephone or online messaging platforms. Others reoriented their research to virtual spaces: the Thailand team, for example, devoted their attention during the lockdown period to research on online outlets selling dried fish. In most areas, field research continued to take place opportunistically and, from mid-2021, has largely resumed.
We have successfully met, or are on track to meeting, most of our mid-term targets.
| target | achievement status |
|---|---|
| A shared, publicly accessible online library of published or manuscript resources concerning dried fish, including grey literature | Achieved. See our Zotero library, Dried Fish Literature Sample, meta-analysis scripts, and Zotero graph query tool. A literature review paper is in submission for peer-reviewed publication. |
| 6 country-level literature review reports (20-40 pages each) | Nearly complete. Two literature review reports have been published by partners in Cambodia and Sri Lanka, while an additional literature review from our Bangladesh partners has been completed and is being prepared for publication. The remaining literature reviews will be folded into scoping research reports. |
| A model research protocol for stacked value chain scoping research | Achieved. Through a consultative process involving all DFM partners, we developed a scoping research protocol and guidelines, ethics handbook, and complete set of research instruments including semi-structured interview guides, participatory research protocols, surveys, and group interview protocols. 156 documents have been approved by the University of Manitoba Ethics Review Board. |
| A database of field data from scoping studies | Incomplete. DFM partners continue to work at preparing indexed interview summaries/transcripts and visual materials for data sharing. For some partners, challenges to completion include technical and translation capacity barriers. To support this work we have provided tools and training in qualitative data analysis (Atlas.ti) and have developed an online image cataloguing tool. |
| Codebooks and thematic memos for dried fish value chains scoping research | Incomplete. (See “database of field data” above.) |
| 8 reports from scoping studies by Research Teams (50 pages each) | Nearly complete. Three scoping research reports have been published by partners in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Maharashtra. Four additional reports have been completed and are being prepared for publication as working papers by teams in Cambodia, Mizoram and Manipur, Bangladesh, and West Bengal. |
| 4 thematic reports from the project Objective Working Groups | Modified target. As described under “Governance” below, we adapted the project’s organizational structure to create Working Groups aligned with three substantive themes (social economy, food and nutrition security, and policy and governance). The first Working Group produced three roundtables at the MARE 2021 “People and the Sea” Conference, incorporating a 25-minute collaboratively produced video on “Visualizing Social Economies”, and is drawing on these presentations to create an e-book intended for publication in June 2022. Reports from the other two Working Groups are forthcoming. |
Discussions early in the project period with Research Teams led an important modification of the research plan. Teams requested a relative increase in allocation of project resources to support scoping research. Teams felt that a more robust scoping phase would be important to create a foundational understanding of the social economy of dried fish in the region. Resources were reallocated primarily from the post-doctoral fellow support to the budgets of the Research Teams. The implications of the shift have been twofold: 1. greater decision-making power to the Research Teams regarding how they choose to implement the scoping research; 2. the reduction in the number of planned second phase stacked value chain surveys from six to three. Some of the reallocated resources from the stacked value chain surveys will now support second phase qualitative research projects by the Research Teams.
This reallocation of project resources will continue to allow us to meet project objectives, but via a somewhat modified research plan.
Knowledge mobilization
We have contributed to building public and academic awareness of the importance of the social economy of dried fish. As major indicators of the growing interest in dried fish generated by our project, Dried Fish Matters has been mentioned in a growing number of publications originating outside our network (e.g., Griffiths et al. 2021, Farmery et al. 2021); and we have been invited by the organizers of the upcoming IMBeR West Pacific Symposium to contribute a two-hour session on dried small fish. In addition to our planned outcomes, we have achieved knowledge mobilization through participation in events such as the World Ocean Week Small-Scale Fisheries Open House, the TBTI Transdisciplinarity course and co-learning webinar series, and MARE Conferences. In February 2020, we co-organized the FAO Small Fish Seminar with three European project groups.
The first of our three research goals set for the midpoint of this project was to share baseline scoping data and secondary literature through online platforms. Building on partner suggestions and the terms of reference for the “DFM Information Hub” described in our project proposal, we have consolidated our primary data sharing functions into a project wiki, which integrates with our Zotero library, public-facing website, and other services. Established in the third year of our project, the DFM Wiki contains over 300 content pages and 244 media files, featuring 2,300 edits made by 31 users from across the project. All draft text and images from our scoping reports and audiovisual outputs are available to – and editable by – project members on this platform. In the second stage of the project, we will work with students and junior researchers to promote continuing engagement by all DFM partners and teams.
Our second goal was to publish academic articles and reports describing the findings of our scoping research. We have authored 18 reports, 23 presentations, and three peer-reviewed articles, in addition to numerous reports and interviews published in local media. Our completed reports and other documents are continuously shared via a publications page generated from our Zotero library.
Our third goal was to achieve sustained public engagement with the project through social media. We have acquired 238 subscribers to our blog and social media feed, posting an average of 1.4 blog posts each month since April 2020. On Twitter, our tweets have earned 3,900 impressions over the 90 days ending October 13, 2021, with a top engagement rate of 30.4%. Our YouTube channel has 1,144 lifetime views. As our research products accumulate in the second stage of the project, we aim to increase the frequency of social media engagement by inviting guest blog posts by partners, students, and collaborators from across the project. We note that the public profile of our project has been raised, particularly on social media, through significant accomplishments of collaborators and Co-Investigators. This has been notably the case with 2021 World Food Prize laureate Shakuntala Thilsted, whose work on the nutritional importance of dried fish directly inspired the Dried Fish Matters project.
We have successfully met the mid-term targets outlined in our Milestone Report, as outlined in the table below.
| target | achievement status |
|---|---|
| An online data-sharing platform that is operational, accessible to the public, and accompanied by supporting documentation | Achieved. We have implemented two data-sharing systems: (1) a shared Zotero library and (2) the DFM Wiki and public-facing website. Both platforms are supported by custom tools and help guides for partners. |
| At least 2 published literature review papers | Achieved. Literature reviews from Cambodia and Sri Lanka have been published as project Working Papers. A paper reporting the findings from our global literature review has been submitted for peer-reviewed publication. Earlier versions of this paper were shared at academic conferences in 2019 and 2021, as well as through two DFM webinars in 2020. Some results were also presented as part of a webinar on using Zotero to structure a global literature review, organized for TBTI Global. |
| Approximately 8 conference papers | Exceeded. Project-affiliated researchers have contributed 23 papers on dried fish to international conferences. |
| Plain-language summaries of our research findings, intended for a public audience | Ongoing. We continue to release a plain-language summary of each DFM report and publication through our blog and Twitter feed. |
| An operating website with comprehensive background information and data about the project | Achieved. We have established a public-facing website that incorporates news and general information about the project, profiles of all the partners and research teams, a list of publications, and public versions of key documents managed in our wiki. |
| At least weekly engagement on major social media platforms | Ongoing. We have posted at least once per week to our Twitter feed over the past year, sharing news about the project, partners, and relevant publications concerning dried fish. |
Student training
In numerical terms, the DFM project has exceeded its training plans for the mid-term point of the project. In the Milestone Report, the project committed to supporting at least 10 graduate students at Canadian universities. We have met that goal exactly and additionally provided funding to support 15 Master’s students to be trained at international institutions. The project has also provided funds to support 10 undergraduate students to be involved in the project as research assistants. DFM contributions to training have been bolstered by the involvement of 16 Master’s students and 25 college students in the projects through partner funds.
We noted in our Milestone Report how the adaptability required by changing research circumstance might lead to the modification of particular milestones for training. This has been the case since the milestone report, but we are pleased to report that the strategy to anticipate changes to training as circumstances have changed have been appropriate and helpful.
As noted elsewhere in the report, the two major changes in the project, adaptations to the Scoping Research design and the delays of the COVID-19 pandemic have had an effect on the training plan.
The reallocation of research funding to the DFM Research Teams was achieved by postponing the recruitment of Master’s students from year 2 to years 3 and 4 of the project and by substantially reducing the commitment to post-doctoral fellows. The consequences for our training milestones from the Milestone Report are as follows:
- Delays in the initiation of the stacked value chain survey component of the second phase of the DFM project due to the more thorough and COVID delayed scoping phase have changed the whole team-level training plan. Instead of detailed stacked value chain training workshops, the project has provided workshops on videography and video editing, Zotero reference management, MediaWiki, and data coding in Atlas.ti.
- The later start of the Master’s students has meant that the project is approximately a year behind schedule in terms of the completion of the first two Master’s students’ theses.
- In the Milestone Report, we provided points that outlined our response to comments on the original project proposal review regarding student autonomy and sharing of learning across generations of students involved in the project. These points have informed our training strategy since the Milestone Report, while continuing to evolve:
- DFM Research Teams have willingly accepted a more flexible coordination of research with students
- As the substantial involvement of local students and HQPs in Research Team activities shows, DFM Research Teams have met their research needs effectively through local recruitment
- One of the successes of DFM’s adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic has been the heightening of use of online communication tools for plenary and sub-project group meetings. We have encouraged students to play an active role in these meetings, and in DFM’s public-facing presentations. Students have thereby been drawn closely into DFM activities and there is clear evidence of cohort building among them, as shown by the students’ independent decision to form a DFM students’ group. The successful embedding of students within the project has created a basis for sharing of knowledge among them that promises to incorporate new students as they join the project.
Training plans for the remainder of the project are anticipated to vary slightly from the original plan. We expect a reduction in the number of PhDs trained in the last part of the project by 2 but a substantial increase in the number of planned Master’s students to compensate.
Project governance
The DFM partnership has evolved since inception. As partnership, two trends are clear. First, there has been a growth in the overall number of partner organizations involved in the project. Against the departure of one partner, the project has formally and informally developed research partnerships with three new organizations. Second, partner engagement has been variable, with some partner organizations engaging very actively while others have participated less vigorously. Contextual factors have affected some organizations’ capacity to engage with the project, as has been the case with our Myanmar partner in the aftermath of the coup in that country.
A similar pattern prevails with the project team. Overall, the number of individual researchers and practitioners in the project team has increased, and the roles of some have changed. Team members have engaged with the project variably, with some playing clear leadership roles in the project and others having to step back due to personal circumstances.
The original governance structure remains broadly the same, but with four important and one minor change that reflect experience from managing the project over its first years. As noted in the milestone report, DFM took seriously the recommendation of the Expert Panel that a more dedicated Project Manager position would be preferable for the project, rather than the original plan for a more contingent position drawing on part-time graduate student positions. The wisdom of that advice was quickly clear in the first 18 months of the project when it became obvious that the project management needs of DFM were full time and also technically more demanding than anticipated. By year three of the project, a full-time highly qualified Project Manager was recruited (Dr. Eric Thrift) and his appointment has proved a huge boon in terms of DFM’s effectiveness.
The remaining changes are in the detail of the project’s governance structure. With the recruitment of Dr. Thrift and with the realization that team members had little time for project administrative tasks due to their research commitments, we made the decision to internalize the work of the operations teams (see Appendix) into DFM Central. The composition of the Research Teams group has expanded to include new individuals and organizations associated with changed and added Research Teams for Kerala, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. Following advice from project participants, we made the decision to reduce the Working Groups to three by combining the originally envisaged Working Groups 1 and 2. The final minor change has been the reduction in importance of the Advisory Committee. We have found that the project’s active participants have the depth of experience required to address most project governance needs, which means that we have had less recourse to the Advisory Committee than expected. We have adjusted labels for the various governance elements of the project accordingly.
Day-to-day governance decisions are taken by DFM Central, in consultation with relevant project participants as needed. Strategic, project-wide governance decisions are taken through consultation in plenary meetings of the project conducted virtually.
Partner engagement
As noted by the Expert Panel in its comments on the original proposal, coordination among partners is a challenge for DFM given the number of international partners and team members and the “complexity” of the project design.
In the Milestone Report we noted the importance of effective communications to address this complexity, and we provided two ways to measure engagement of the partners and team members in DFM. These measures were that each partner organization is sharing findings internally and externally and that each partner organization has developed strategies to continue to work on the data it has collected.
The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic after the submission of the Milestone Report added a further complication to our partner engagement strategy. Initially, we had assumed that the most effective way of assuring engagement would be through face-to-face meetings. Indeed, we had two important, foundations-establishing meetings in 2019 in Bangladesh and India. Even after those meetings, however, a sense of consistent and sustained communications and engagement in the project was lacking. Paradoxically, the barrier to face-to-face meetings that resulted from travel bans in face of the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a familiarization with and regularization of use of virtual meeting tools that has largely addressed the pre-COVID sense of a communications gap in the project.
A study of the DFM project in 2021 by the IMBERSea Master’s student Alexia Pigeault now shows a high level of overall satisfaction with communications within the DFM project. This suggests that internal project communications are working well. From the perspective of DFM Central, we have the impression that an organic quality of consultation and decision making in the project has now fallen into place.
Ms. Pigeault’s findings, however, also indicate less satisfaction with the public-facing communication of project findings by DFM. Part of the explanation for this lies also in the delaying impact of the pandemic. As noted above, DFM’s entire scoping research phase has been considerably delayed by COVID restrictions. Nonetheless, for the second half of the project, as scoping, second phase, and student research findings continue to emerge, the project will have to ensure that its external communications strategy functions as effectively as possible. The question of external project communications will be incorporated into project-level planning meetings following the submission of the mid-term report.
Experience in the project to date has shown that deliberately scaffolded internal meetings with individual partners, regional teams, and of the project as a whole, in combination with strategically organized work towards public presentation and written outputs provides a valuable mechanism for continuing to build engagement. This approach will continue as DFM moves from its scoping research phase to the focused and applied research efforts of the project’s second phase. That ongoing process of engagement will stimulate continued efforts to improve the project’s strategy for disseminating findings externally.
Contributions
As of the midpoint of our grant, we have accumulated $405,769 in cash and in-kind contributions from the University of Manitoba and partner organizations, amounting to 16.5% of the grant total. As such, we are on track to meeting the 35% commitment requirement for the project end.
Approximately one quarter of our commitments come from the host institution ($66,428 cash and $39,000 in-kind), in the form of scholarships or matching funds for project-sponsored doctoral students and teaching releases for the Project Director. Although the current commitment level is somewhat lower than planned for project midpoint due to delayed student recruitment, we are on track to meeting the full host institution commitment of $311,500. This will almost guarantee that we meet the overall project commitments target at the end of Year 7.
Contributions from our partners have mostly remained on-track. Insofar as our work has mainly occurred online due to pandemic restrictions, in-kind partner contributions of office facilities and meeting space have been lower than originally anticipated. These reduced amounts are offset, however, by important contributions from some partners in the form of salaries for research associates, administrative support, and shared travel costs linked to project activities.
Contribution levels were adversely affected by the non-participation or withdrawal of some partners from our project due to political or administrative challenges (NAG, CIFRI) or changes in key personnel (WCS, MCIC, KILA). At the same time, we welcome contributions from new partners who have joined the project in progress: Azim Premji University, TBTI Global, and Dakshin Foundation. We are pleased to note additional income of US$7,000 from WorldFish and the CGIAR Research Program on Fish Agri-Food Systems (FISH CRP) to support the work of two graduate students affiliated with the Dried Fish Matters project. With the reorientation of our Myanmar activity to support the work of four graduate students at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), we have received a considerable additional cash commitment of $80,000 from AIT that will be allocated to student scholarships.
Budget
Our project budget is currently underspent, primarily due to pandemic-related field research delays, with an unspent balance of $437,373 as of March 1, 2021. Taking current commitments into account, we anticipate that the project will be completed on-budget at the end of year 7.
We have made several adjustments to the project budget to accommodate external constraints and respond to needs identified by partners. The overall allocation of funds in each budget category remains largely unchanged.
- Student funding. Recruitment of graduate students was delayed in order to permit onboarding of students once research was fully underway. Supports originally planned for postdoctoral fellows have been shifted to support research associates and student research assistants recruited by overseas partner organizations. In light of the political instability in Myanmar, we have agreed with NAG to reallocate research funds to support six Master's students from Myanmar who will study at the Asian Institute of Technology.
- Scoping research. In the first year of the project, we engaged in a collaborative planning process with partner organizations that led to a greater allocation of funds for qualitative research within local research teams, and a corresponding reduction in scale of the stacked value chain quantitative survey (now planned for three countries instead of six). This is reflected in the reduced amounts for "Professional and technical services", originally allocated to survey field supports, and the somewhat higher category of "Other" expenditures, which include field expenses for research teams.
- Travel. The project is $40,000 under budget in this area due to the cancellation of international travel during pandemic lockdowns. Some of these funds will be reallocated to support greater participation in project mid-term and end meetings.
- Administration. The original budget allocated $30,000 per year for a part-time project manager role, which was intended to be filled by graduate students. This plan proved unrealistic, as management of a multinational project of this scale has required full-time coordination by a staff member who is able to keep track of the progress and needs of dozens of stakeholders, and who is also familiar with complex administrative systems. Consequently, we have hired a full-time project administrator to assume responsibility for managing the project while providing technical support and training to partners. The projected cost of this position (including benefits) amounts to $84,000 per annum, as dictated by the position classification determined by HR and the AESES (support staff) collective agreement at the University of Manitoba. While this cost is higher than anticipated in the original budget, the contributions of a full-time support staff member have proven indispensable to the success of our project thus far.
| Budget categories | Actual Expenses | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | ||
| Students salaries and benefits/stipends | Undergraduate | 563.22 | 4,714.57 | 4,432.04 |
| Masters | - | 14,607.32 | 44,043.84 | |
| Doctorate | 10,819.39 | 40,644.56 | 51,217.85 | |
| Non-student salaries and benefits/stipends | Postdoctoral | - | 9,564.75 | 1,318.75 |
| Other | 37,069.05 | 32,054.62 | 72,417.37 | |
| Travel and subsistence costs | Travel | 56,952.88 | 65,913.00 | 27,842.04 |
| Other expenses | Professional and technical services/ contracts | - | 30,716.38 | 21,696.82 |
| Materials, supplies and other expenditures | 13,241.46 | 17,207.19 | 19,244.21 | |
| Non-disposable equipment | Computer hardware | - | - | 2,544.52 |
| Other | ||||
| Other expenses (specify) | Research time stipends | - | - | 2,000.00 |
| Total | 118,646.00 | 215,422.39 | 246,757.44 | |
| Budget categories | Projected Expenses | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year 4 | Year 5 | Year 6 | Year 7 | ||
| Students salaries and benefits/stipends | Undergraduate | 1,000.00 | |||
| Masters | 128,716.00 | 124,100.00 | 52,884.00 | 27,292.00 | |
| Doctorate | 111,395.98 | 75,740.00 | 61,400.00 | 55,500.00 | |
| Non-student salaries and benefits/stipends | Postdoctoral | 25,000.00 | |||
| Other | 81,640.00 | 235,270.00 | 236,940.00 | 86,640.00 | |
| Travel and subsistence costs | Travel | 9,225.00 | 77,495.00 | 26,390.00 | 47,000.00 |
| Other expenses | Professional and Technical services / Contracts | 9,456.69 | 38,600.00 | - | - |
| Materials, supplies and other expenditures | 184,977.70 | 149,912.00 | 60,619.80 | 4,000.00 | |
| Non-disposable equipment | Computer hardware | - | - | - | - |
| Other | - | - | - | - | |
| Total | 582,794.47 | 701,117.00 | 438,233.80 | 220,432.00 | |
