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How to organize an “all-hands” meeting

By Gemma Jiang, Diane Boghrat and Jenny Grabmeier

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1. Gemma Jiang (biography)
2. Diane Boghrat (biography)
3. Jenny Grabmeier (biography)

What is an “all-hands” meeting? What’s required to assemble an effective planning team? What should the planning team consider in setting parameters for the meeting?

What is an “all-hands” meeting?

Here we consider all-hands meetings in the context of our experience with a large cross-disciplinary institute, where members are geographically distributed. An annual all-hands meeting is an effective mechanism many such organizations employ to bring all members together in person.

An all-hands meeting differs from a science conference in two main ways. First, its participants are identified members within the boundary of the organization. It is usually not open to a wider audience. Second, its topic areas extend beyond the research projects supported by the organization. Such topics can include strategic planning among leadership, community building among early career researchers, professional and interpersonal capacity building topics, and development of team science competency.

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Making the Nominal Group Technique more accessible

By Jason Olsen

jason-olsen
Jason Olsen (biography)

Looking to gain real insights from those with lived experience about a specific topic? Interested in a low-cost method that fosters equal participation and discussion over participant domination in a research focus group? Want to know about modifications to make pan-disability (ie., working with participants with different impairments) research focus groups more inclusive?

The Nominal Group Technique developed by Ven and Delbecq (1972) has been used for more than 50 years. Key to its success is the posing of a single unambiguous and unbiased question about a problem that can generate a wide range of answers. The process structures the meeting to enable critical dimensions of the question to be identified, ranked and rated in a way that:

  • limits the influence of the researcher leading the project, as well as the influence of attendees,
  • allows participants to clarify the question’s dimensions and gaps,
  • increases the likelihood of equal participation for all group members,
  • affords equal influence to different, and potentially conflicting, values and ideas.

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Understanding the links between coloniality, forced displacement and knowledge production

By Alemu Tesfaye and Truphena Mukuna

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1. Alemu Tesfaye (biography)
2. Truphena Mukuna (biography)

What is the relationship between coloniality, forced displacement and knowledge production? How is this relevant to decolonization efforts?

The history of forced displacement can be traced back to the colonial era, during which European powers established colonies in various parts of the world, displacing and often subjugating indigenous populations. The displacement of indigenous peoples often involved the forced removal from their ancestral lands and the disruption of their social and cultural systems.

In this context, knowledge production was used to justify and legitimize the displacement of indigenous populations. European colonizers created and disseminated knowledge that portrayed indigenous peoples as “primitive” or “uncivilized,” and therefore in need of “civilizing” through the imposition of European values and systems. This knowledge served to legitimize colonial policies of forced displacement and cultural assimilation.

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Interdisciplinary teamwork: Expert and non-expert at the same time

By Annemarie Horn and Eduardo Urias

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1. Annemarie Horn (biography)
2. Eduardo Urias (biography)

How do teams engage in interdisciplinary knowledge integration and how can they be supported in doing so? Why does simple sharing and questioning of knowledge not necessarily lead to interdisciplinary knowledge integration? And what does it mean to act as both an expert and a non-expert in interdisciplinary teamwork, and why is it hard?

In a five month course, we supervised a team of eight master students in the integration of insights and concepts from their individual, discipline-based projects into a joint work about circular economy. Based on our earlier research, described in our i2Insights contribution on four typical behaviours in interdisciplinary knowledge integration, we expected that if we helped the students to share their own knowledge and to engage with each other’s knowledge, that integration would emerge. We therefore had students prepare and give presentations about their individual projects, background, and conceptual underpinnings to share their knowledge.

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Highlighted contributions

Visions of knowledge systems for life on Earth and how to get there

By Niko Schäpke and Ioan Fazey

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1. Niko Schäpke (biography)
2. Ioan Fazey (biography)

How should formalized knowledge systems, including universities, research institutes and education, transform to keep pace with wider and inevitable societal transformations associated with accelerating global change? What kinds of changes are needed in these knowledge systems and how can they be encouraged?

These questions were explored by participants of the Transformations 2017 conference and in subsequent research (Fazey et al., 2020). This included highlighting current challenges, envisioning future systems and the policy and actions required for the transition. These are summarized in the figure below.

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Do we need diversity science?

By Katrin Prager

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Katrin Prager (biography)

Where do the benefits of diverse teams come from and how can those benefits be unlocked? What are the pitfalls to watch out for in constructing a team that is greater than the sum of its parts?

To boost innovation and creativity in teams I suggest we need to develop diversity science, which has 5 elements:

  1. identifying the right kind of diversity
  2. avoiding homophily
  3. avoiding dominance hierarchies
  4. fostering appropriate leadership
  5. building and protecting trust.

Let’s unpack each of these elements.

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Can foresight and complexity play together?

By James E. Burke

author_james-burke
James E. Burke (biography)

What is foresight and how does it differ from prediction? What role can complexity play in foresight? Does Cynefin® offer a possible framework to begin integrating foresight and complexity?

In this blog post, I describe how:

  • Foresight identifies clues for the future and integrates them into forecasts
  • Complexity theory offers ways to understand how the future emerges
  • Cynefin® gives us a framework of domains that allows us to better understand trends and forecasts.

What is foresight?

Foresight starts from a place of humility—we cannot predict the future—and an acceptance of ambiguity.

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Three types of knowledge

By Tobias Buser and Flurina Schneider

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1. Tobias Buser (biography)
2. Flurina Schneider (biography)

When addressing societal challenges, how can researchers orient their thinking to produce not only knowledge on problems, but also knowledge that helps to overcome those problems?

The concept of ‘three types of knowledge’ is helpful for structuring project goals, formulating research questions and developing action plans. The concept first appeared in the 1990s and has developed into a core underpinning of transdisciplinary research.

The three types of knowledge, illustrated in the first figure below, are:

1. Systems knowledge, which is usually defined as knowledge about the current system or problem situation. It is mainly analytical and descriptive. For example, if you think of water scarcity, systems knowledge refers to producing a holistic understanding of the relevant socio-ecological system, including aspects like water availability, water uses, water management, justice questions, and their interrelations.

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