Eighth annual review

By Gabriele Bammer

Which i2Insights contributions inspired you in 2023? What did you learn that was new and how did it help you in tackling the complex societal or environmental problems you focus on? What would you like to see in 2024 and beyond?

One of the delights of curating i2Insights is learning something from every blog post. Another is the personal interactions involved in broadening the global community of contributors, introducing fresh voices and fresh insights, alongside those who are more seasoned contributors.

In this last blog post for 2023, I survey three of the year’s many highlights and what they mean for the operation of i2Insights:

• integration and synthesis as an emerging ‘hot’ topic
• re-introducing “golden oldies,” ie. tried and tested tools
• increasing the number of countries represented by contributors, with an accompanying focus on decolonisation.

i2Insights will be back on January 9, 2024 (Australian time) with our 500^th contribution, which is also the first from Sri Lanka.

Integration and synthesis as an emerging ‘hot’ topic

i2Insights contributions highlighted two separate strands of work in 2023. The first comes from integration as a mainstay of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and scholarship, where considerations included institutionalisation, leading integration, and teaching integration in:

• Towards a theory of change to institutionalise integration experts and expertise by The Aeschiried Integrators
• Integration in inter- and transdisciplinary research: how can the leadership challenges be addressed? by Lisa Deutsch and Sabine Hoffmann
• Interdisciplinary teamwork: Expert and non-expert at the same time by Annemarie Horn and Eduardo Urias

Independently, Harvard University’s Howard Gardner has been championing scholarly synthesis, describing what a synthesising mind looks like and providing a taxonomy of the kinds of investigations required to enhance understanding of synthesis, as shared in:

• Towards a taxonomy of synthesizing by Howard Gardner

These two sets of contributions illustrate one of the aims of i2Insights, which is to bring together strands of work that might not otherwise meet. We do this by welcoming and publishing a diverse range of contributions and by encouraging comments and discussion on each contribution.

As a result, i2Insights might look like a hodge-podge to some, but there is an organising principle and a focused set of main topics which also provide the backbone of the index. Let me digress by explaining this briefly. In a nutshell, i2Insights aims to improve the ability of researchers to tackle complex societal and environmental problems, by providing tools (concepts, methods, processes, frameworks, etc.) for:

• developing a more comprehensive understanding of complex societal and environmental problems, and the situations in which they are embedded, in order to generate fresh insights and ideas for action. These tools are indexed under the main topics: context, diversity, integration, systems, and unknowns.
• supporting improved policy and practice responses to such problems by government, business and civil society. These tools are indexed under the main topics: change, decision making, and research implementation.
• effective interactions, with tools indexed under the main topics of communication, stakeholder engagement and teamwork.

The aim of the index is to make blog posts on any of the 11 main topics easily findable. For example, everything relevant to integration (which for indexing purposes includes synthesis) can be found at https://i2insights.org/category/main-topics/integration/.

Re-introducing golden oldies

While i2Insights is interested in new tools for tackling complex societal and environmental problems, we’re also keen to highlight and remind people about golden oldies – concepts, methods, processes, frameworks, etc. that have been around for a while. Many of these may be widely used in one approach – such as systems thinking – or one problem domain – such as health – but will be new to those working with other approaches or on other problems. Some blog posts feature straight-forward descriptions of these tools, while others demonstrate applications in new ways or to new problems.

In 2023, i2Insights highlighted established tools for change and decision making, all from different research traditions, especially:

• Theory of change in inter- and transdisciplinary research by Josefa Kny, Sabine Hoffmann, Emilia Nagy and Martina Schäfer
• Diffusion of innovations by James W. Dearing
• Making the Nominal Group Technique more accessible by Jason Olsen
• Generating evidence using the Delphi method by Dmitry Khodyakov.

Long-used tools for knowledge co-production – which along with integration is another mainstay of transdisciplinarity – have also been a feature in the following:

• An analytical framework for knowledge co-production by Marianne Penker
• Co-producing knowledge: Phases, issues and the td-net toolbox by Sibylle Studer and Theres Paulsen.

Finally, thanks to the sterling efforts of i2Insights Ambassador, Cathy Hobbs, we have been able to remind readers of several key systems thinking tools, notably:

• Viable System Model: A theory for designing more responsive organisations by Angela Espinosa
• Seven methods for mapping systems by Pete Barbrook-Johnson and Alexandra Penn
• Pragmatism and critical systems thinking: Back to the future of systems thinking by Michael Jackson
• Using archetypes as a systemic lens to understand the complexity of sustainable development by Hossein Hosseini, Enayat A. Moallemi, Sibel Eker, Edoardo Bertone and Katrina Szetey
• Key systems thinking lessons from Donella Meadows by Geoff Marlow
• The Strategic Choice Approach in shaping public policies by Catherine Hobbs.

Country representation and decolonisation

i2Insights aims to be a truly global platform, but there’s still a long way to go. In 2023, 20% of contributions included authors who were Indigenous or based in the Global South (an all-time high), notably:

• Decolonising your writing by kate harriden
• Institutionalizing evidence-informed policy-making in Latin America and the Caribbean / Institucionalizando la toma de decisiones informadas por evidencias en Latinoamérica y el Caribe/ Institucionalizando a formulação de políticas informadas em evidências na América Latina e Caribe by Directors and Coordinators of the Latin American and the Caribbean Evidence Hub
• Lessons for strengthening community-university partnerships by David D. Hart, Bridie McGreavy, Anthony Sutton, Gabrielle V. Hillyer and Darren J. Ranco
• Challenges to science-policy-society interactions in transdisciplinary research by Oghenekaro N. Odume, Akosua B. K. Amaka-Otchere, Blessing N. Onyima, Fati Aziz, Sandra B. Kushitor and Sokhna Thiam
• Six lessons for connecting evidence to policy and practice in the Global South by Fréjus Thoto
• A practical framework for transforming academia through inter- and transdisciplinarity / Un marco práctico para transformar el mundo académico mediante la interdisciplinariedad y la transdisciplinariedad by Bianca Vienni Baptista and Danilo Streck
• Understanding the links between coloniality, forced displacement and knowledge production by Alemu Tesfaye and Truphena Mukuna
• Six lessons from Iran for strengthening cross-disciplinary research by Reza Dehnavieh
• Systemic interventions for complex problems: The Intervention Design Process / Para problemas complejos, intervenciones sistémicas: el Proceso de Diseño de Intervención by Daniel Marín Vanegas
• Challenging societal barriers: The power of metaphors and analogies in addressing stigma by Alemu Tesfaye

It was a particular pleasure to welcome first contributions from Benin, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Senegal, and Trinidad and Tobago. Overall i2Insights has authors from 53 countries. To put that in perspective, the United Nations recognises 193 nations. And, of course, the target is to have every country contributing regularly, not just as a one-off.

It is not possible to increase country representation without also explicitly addressing decolonisation. The following insightful contributions help us all get better at this important work:

• Inclusive Systemic Thinking for transformative change by Ellen Lewis and Anne Stephens
• Decolonising research capacity development by Maru Mormina and Romina Istratii
• Decolonising your writing by kate harriden
• Four approaches to shifting mindsets for decolonising knowledge by Peter Taylor and Crystal Tremblay
• Understanding the links between coloniality, forced displacement and knowledge production by Alemu Tesfaye and Truphena Mukuna

Last word for 2023

i2Insights is designed to provide a weekly alert to a tool that may be useful for your work. If you subscribe to i2Insights (see “Get notifications about new posts” in the right hand column), you’ll receive an e-mail as each new contribution is published, that will hopefully pique your interest. You can also find information about i2Insights contributions on LinkedIn and, for now, X (Twitter) via #I2Sresources or by following me.

i2Insights contributions also become part of an indexed repository which aims to make it easy to find tools relevant to your work. In addition to the 11 main topics described earlier, there are three other main topics: education, evaluation and institutionalisation. As well as these main topics, blog posts are also indexed on a host of subtopics, including co-production and decolonisation, referred to above.

Let me finish by reiterating the opening questions: Which i2Insights contributions inspired you in 2023? What did you learn that was new and how did it help you in tackling the complex societal or environmental problems you focus on? What would you like to see in 2024 and beyond?

Acknowledgements: i2Insights website would not exist without Peter Deane, who carefully manages all the technical aspects, provides a wise sounding board and generally infuses the production of i2Insights with good sense, informed by his own interests both in transdisciplinarity and related approaches and in providing the best possible experience for i2Insights readers. It also would not exist without you – the authors, commenters and readers. Many thanks!

Biography: Gabriele Bammer PhD is Professor of Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at The Australian National University in Canberra. i2S provides theory and methods for tackling complex societal and environmental problems, especially for developing a more comprehensive understanding in order to generate fresh insights and ideas for action, supporting improved policy and practice responses by government, business and civil society, and effective interactions between disciplinary and stakeholder experts. She is the inaugural President of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (2023-25).