Month: September 2024

Establishing, discussing, and sustaining accountability in your team: Seven strategies

By L. Michelle Bennett, Michael O’Rourke, and Edgar Cardenas

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1. L. Michelle Bennett (biography)
2. Michael O’Rourke (biography
3. Edgar Cardenas (biography)

How can I hold my teammates accountable?

Being willing and able to hold yourself and others accountable depends heavily on the collaborative culture created by the team (see previous i2Insights contribution by L. Michelle Bennett on Mindset matters for interdisciplinary teams: Choose a collaborative one).

Collaborative cultures characterized by psychological safety, transparency, and an ability to engage in productive conflict provide the strongest foundation for accountability.

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A framework for transdisciplinary boundary work

By Lisa Andrews, Stefania Munaretto, Heleen Mees and Peter Driessen.

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1. Lisa Andrews (biography)
2. Stefania Munaretto (biography)
3. Heleen Mees (biography)
4. Peter Driessen (biography)

What are the challenges in engaging different actors and integrating knowledge across disciplines? What does it mean to do this work ‘well’? What brings about successful engagement, boundary crossing and knowledge integration to enable impact? More specifically, how can transdisciplinary research project actors collaborate to produce outputs and foster societal impact?

The following framework identifies 12 boundary work activities to support transdisciplinary research project actors to collaborate, co-create and integrate knowledge that leads to societal impact across project phases. Here, impact is defined as the desired long-term societal, economic and/or environmental changes agreed upon by the involved transdisciplinary actors based on the problem and scientific knowledge gaps they aim to address, with impact resulting from a chain of events to which the transdisciplinary project has entirely or in part contributed.

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Team science is an integral competency for the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator Program

By L. Michelle Bennett, Edgar Cardenas and Michael O’Rourke

authors_l-michelle-bennett_edgar-cardenas_michael-orourke
1. L. Michelle Bennett (biography)
2. Edgar Cardenas (biography)
3. Michael O’Rourke (biography)

What roles do research and development agencies have in actively preparing research teams to engage productively in collaborative research? Is it enough to require that teams engaging in funded research prepare themselves to collaborate effectively?

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator Program was launched in 2019 to fast track the development of ideas into real-world applications and solutions intended to have substantive societal and economic impact. Building upon basic research and discovery and using a convergent approach, the program accelerates use-inspired research toward impact by funding multidisciplinary teams from a wide range of disciplines and sectors to solve complex societal and economic challenges.

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Considerations for creating and funding new toolkits for inter- and transdisciplinary research

By Bethany Laursen, Bianca Vienni-Baptista, Gabriele Bammer, Antonietta Di Giulio, Theres Paulsen, Melissa Robson-Williams and Sibylle Studer.

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1. Bethany Laursen; 2. Bianca Vienni-Baptista; 3. Gabriele Bammer; 4. Antonietta Di Giulio; 5. Theres Paulsen; 6. Melissa Robson-Williams; 7. Sibylle Studer (biographies)

Are you thinking about creating a new toolkit for inter- and transdisciplinary research? What questions can help you consider whether to embark on such an effort? If you are a funder, how can you decide whether to support existing toolkits or fund new ones? And how can toolkits help your reviewers in considering funding applications?

We are the core members of the Toolkits and Methods Working Group hosted within the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD Alliance). Since 2020, we have jointly mapped and visualized the previously uncharted landscape of inter- or transdisciplinary toolkits.

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