CIRCA Research

The Culturally Inclusive Research Centre Australia (CIRCA), formerly the Cultural and Indigenous Research Centre Australia, is an industry leader in research and evaluation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities. We are a team of academically trained applied social scientists with cultural expertise, so you can trust our analyses and reports will be rigorous, insightful, and culturally nuanced. 

CIRCA is a community-based research firm. By being community-based we are able to conduct culturally safe research, culturally appropriate research, and relational research. Through our network of over 250 community-based bilingual Culturally and Linguistically Diverse and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research Consultants, CIRCA is connected to most non-Anglo and non-English speaking cultural communities across the continent. 

We guarantee cultural safety in research by our core staff being culturally diverse, with social justice and equity values. Our research is done by diverse people with diverse people and always with the purpose of empowering or contributing positively to the lives of diverse people.

At CIRCA, our approach to doing culturally appropriate research is to craft research that:

• meets people where they are, be that outside, at home, in community spaces, or on the phone
• accounts for how power imbalances may affect the focus group dynamic or ability of an interviewee to open up to an interviewer
• takes account of cultural norms and practices in the way we facilitate interviews or focus groups

Our relational approach to research means that we build relationships across cultural communities through the research design, and we have relationships with the people we are conducting the research with. This guarantees respect and it values the quality of the relationship just as much as the research outcome, which is critical to long-term sustainable community-based research.