Latest contribution
How could research ethics governance better support participatory, transdisciplinary, and transformation-oriented research?
By Ying-Syuan (Elaine) Huang and Julia Wittmayer.
2. Julia Wittmayer (biography)
How can we design an ethics governance system that can better respond when ethical dilemmas emerge after institutional approval has been granted?
This question is increasingly pressing for researchers engaged in participatory, transdisciplinary, and transformative work. Ethical concerns often arise in-situ where partnerships evolve, power dynamics shift, community expectations change, and research begins to have effects beyond the original project design.
These concerns do not fit neatly into conventional ethics review procedures at universities, which still tend to be organised around upfront review: researchers submit an application, a committee assesses it, and approval is granted before the research begins. This model matters for safeguarding participants, researchers, and institutions. But it is increasingly misaligned with the type of engaged research that emphasises social learning and democratically deliberative process for positive societal change.
Recent contributions
Leading with Lived Experience across the research life cycle
By Catherine Brasier, Dan Chamberlain and Sarah Wilson.
2. Dan Chamberlain (biography)
3. Sarah Wilson (biography)
How can researchers and people with Lived Experience expertise effectively and authentically work together in Lived-Experience-centred research?
Along with colleagues, we have developed a structured approach, namely the “Wellways Six Steps of the Research Life Cycle,” which is shown in the figure below and described, along with 16 key actions. The aim is to help researchers and people with Lived Experience expertise to “work it out together.”
People with Lived Experience expertise demonstrate deep understanding of the following elements to drive their input:
- their own personal experience of the issue at hand
- their understanding of other people’s Lived Experiences
- Lived Experience values and practices
- the history of the Lived Experience movement – including the impact of the systemic and social factors.
Accountability in two different teamwork environments: The jigsaw puzzle and the collage
By Allison Dalton, Yvonne Pelling and Gaetano R. Lotrecchiano.
2. Yvonne Pelling (biography)
3. Gaetano R. Lotrecchiano (biography)
How can teams demonstrate accountability in two different collaborative environments?
Accountability refers to the ways, both tangible and intangible, of showing up for ourselves and the rest of the team throughout a collaborative project. It gives rise to trust and forward momentum which impacts team functioning and ultimately the outcome of the work.
Here we look at accountability in two different collaborative environments, which we refer to using the metaphors of the jigsaw puzzle and the collage.
A team tasked with assembling a jigsaw puzzle deals with a finite set of clearly distinguished pieces, each to be fitted together in one correct way, and a reference image to demonstrate what the outcome will look like.
Transdisciplinary research in the Global South: Challenges and recommendations
By Laila Sandroni and Marcel Bursztyn.
2. Marcel Bursztyn (biography)
What are the key challenges in conducting research that aims to bridge science, policy and grassroots demands? How can such challenges be addressed?
This i2Insights contribution is based on transdisciplinary research that we and colleagues undertook with local communities in Brazil (Sandroni et al., 2026) and we suggest that the challenges and recommendations have broader relevance. Some are relevant to all transdisciplinary research, while others have particular resonance in Global South contexts.
Challenges
Key challenges centre around timing; tensions in worldviews; urgency and impact of climate change; process-oriented research and academic outputs; and language, concepts, and translation.
Timing
Implementation strategies: Functions and intentions
By Julia E. Moore and Sobia Khan.
2. Sobia Khan (biography)
When planning for change, how can you usefully think about the intended function or purpose of your implementation strategy? And what are effective ways to usefully think about how the strategy will operate in practice, the mechanisms that shape how people experience it, and how change is activated?
We have developed thirteen intended functions or purposes that an implementation strategy can serve. Functions clarify what a strategy is meant to accomplish. In addition, we have developed 35 intentions of implementation strategies, which describe how people engage with a strategy and how it leads to change.
Functions of implementation strategies
Individuals and teams who are planning, implementing, or supporting change may find it useful to review the 13 functions or purposes of strategies for change that are described in the table below in order to clearly communicate, and effectively plan for, what they are aiming to achieve.
Highlighted contributions
Decolonising research capacity development
By Maru Mormina and Romina Istratii
2. Romina Istratii (biography)
Why do many countries in the Global South remain behind when it comes to knowledge production and use, despite decades-long efforts to strengthen research capacity?
We think this is because the North still looks at the South with a ‘deficit mentality,’ according to which the latter has the problems and the former the solutions. From this standpoint, northern-led capacity development initiatives fail to recognise the South’s rich and diverse knowledge traditions and systems. Instead, they continue to impose monolithic blueprints of knowledge production, therefore re-inscribing colonial patterns of intellectual Western hegemony.
Of course, in many countries, research systems need support but current approaches are at best producing mixed results. A decolonial lens can help us identify alternative models.
Decolonising research capacity development in principle
Five core competency areas for participatory modeling
By Sondoss Elsawah, Elena Bakhanova, Raimo P. Hämäläinen and Alexey Voinov
2. Elena Bakhanova (biography)
3. Raimo P. Hämäläinen (biography)
4. Alexey Voinov (biography)
What knowledge and skills do individuals and teams need to be effective at participatory modeling?
We suggest that five core competency areas are essential for participatory modeling:
- systems thinking
- modeling
- group facilitation
- project management and leadership
- operating in the virtual space.
These are illustrated in the figure below.
These competency areas have naturally overlapping elements and should therefore be seen as a holistic and interdependent set.
Pragmatism and critical systems thinking: Back to the future of systems thinking
By Michael C. Jackson
Would systems thinking realize its potential as a force for good in the world if it rediscovered and developed its pragmatist roots? Does the link between the past and future of systems thinking lie through critical systems thinking and practice?
In brief, I suggest that:
- Pragmatism provides an appropriate philosophy for systems thinking.
- Systems thinking has pragmatist roots.
- Critical systems thinking and practice shows how to develop those roots.
- Pragmatism can help systems thinking realize its potential and systems thinking can help pragmatism achieve what it set out to do.
What is pragmatism?
Kant was in awe of Newton’s science but believed it could supply certainty only about the physical world. In most areas of human endeavor, he argued, we have to use ‘pragmatic belief’ to guide our actions.
How to organize an “all-hands” meeting
By Gemma Jiang, Diane Boghrat and Jenny Grabmeier
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.