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Choosing a suitable transdisciplinary research framework
By Gabriele Bammer
What are some of the key frameworks that can be used for transdisciplinary research? What are their particular strengths? How can you choose one that’s most suitable for your transdisciplinary project?
The nine frameworks described here were highlighted in a series for which I was the commissioning editor. The series was published in the scientific journal GAIA: Ecological Perspectives in Science and Society between mid-2017 and end-2019.
Choosing among them is not a matter of right or wrong, but of each being more or less helpful for a particular problem in a particular context.
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Recent posts
Finding expertise in research integration and implementation to tackle complex problems
By Gabriele Bammer
When you are pulling together a team to tackle a complex societal or environmental problem, where can you find the expertise to deal with:
- Research integration challenges such as: deciding which disciplines and stakeholders to include, setting limits around the problem, dealing with competing problem definitions, managing intractable unknowns, and synthesising different perspectives?
- Research implementation challenges such as: identifying likely change agents, taking context into account, developing tools and processes for research to support more effective actions to ameliorate the problem?
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Implementation during a time of crisis: The critical role of trusting relationships
By Allison Metz
Are there lessons we can learn from the current response of service systems which have galvanized into action to meet the needs of children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic? How does the response of service systems affect our hypotheses about how change happens at scale?
In my professional role providing implementation support to public service systems, I’ve observed these systems responding to the COVID-19 pandemic with urgency and agility. The urgency is to be expected, but the agility has inspired me.
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Three principles for co-designing intervention strategies
By David Lam
What processes are involved when researchers and local actors co-design context-specific intervention strategies? This ‘how to’ knowledge is outlined in the three principles described below. Local actors can include non-governmental organisations, local leaders, community groups and individual activists.
Principle 1. Explore existing and envisioned initiatives fostering change towards the desired future
This has 3 key steps:
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What lessons for improving interdisciplinary collaboration emerged from the 2019 Science of Team Science conference?
By Julie Thompson Klein and Ben Miller
Six lessons emerged from the seven plenary panels at the May 2019 Science of Team Science conference hosted by Michigan State University in the US.
1. Understanding the nature of team science is crucial to monitoring team behavior, including managing conflict, diverse voices, and strong leadership.
The Science of Groups and Teams plenary panel affirmed one approach alone is not sufficient.
Highlighted posts on change
The interplay between knowledge and power / La interacción entre el conocimiento y el poder
An English version of this post is available
La mayoría de los recientes enfoques para abordar problemas complejos no incluyen la dimensión política. Por otra parte, la ciencia política, así como los estudios de política pública y de gobierno contemporáneo han realizado escasas contribuciones al tratamiento de los procesos de toma de decisiones desde dinámicas complejas.
¿Cómo podemos desarrollar marcos innovadores que incorporen la dimensión política?
Read moreThe interplay between knowledge and power / La interacción entre el conocimiento y el poder
Three schools of transformation thinking
By Uwe Schneidewind and Karoline Augenstein
‘Transformation’ has become a buzzword in debates about sustainable development. But while the term has become very popular, it is often unclear what is meant exactly by ‘transformation’.
The fuzziness of the concept can be seen as a strength, giving it metaphoric power and facilitating inter- and transdisciplinary cooperation. However, this fuzziness means there is also a danger of the transformation debate being co-opted by powerful actors and used strategically to impede societal change towards more sustainable pathways.
Achieving transformational change
By Steve Waddell
Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals presents probably the most audacious human organizing challenge ever. Their number, global scale, range of issues, timeline, and number of actors involved is surely unparalleled. They require transformational change. But what is transformational change? How does it differ from other forms of change? What’s required to achieve it?
Colleagues and I have created the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) Transformations Forum to address these questions. In this blog post I first explore three types of change: incremental, reform and transformation, summarized in the figure below.
Scaling up amidst complexity
By Ann Larson
How can new or under-utilized healthcare practices be expanded and institutionalized to achieve audacious and diverse global health outcomes, ranging from eliminating polio to reversing the rise in non-communicable diseases? How can complex adaptive systems with diverse components and actors interacting in multiple ways with each other and the external environment best be dealt with? What makes for an effective scale-up effort?
Four in-depth case studies of scale-up efforts were used to explore if there were different pathways to positively change a complex adaptive system.