David Lam – Integration and Implementation Insights

Connecting and building capacity in the transdisciplinary research community

March 24, 2022August 26, 2021

By Josefa Kny and David P. M. Lam

authors_josefa-kny_david-lam — 1. Josefa Kny (biography) (photograph by Leyla Hoppe)
2. David P. M. Lam (biography)

What does the transdisciplinary research community want when it comes to building a global and virtual community, as well as capacity?

In developing a new interactive online platform, we surveyed 122 transdisciplinary researchers, mostly from German-speaking countries, and ran an online workshop with 27 early career transdisciplinary researchers from 8 European countries to assess what they would find most effective.

The key needs identified in the survey were to:

receive and share information on community- and capacity- building activities
have opportunities to network and discuss within an online community
share their own research projects and experiences.

How can we amplify impact to foster transformative change?

January 18, 2023September 29, 2020

By David P. M. Lam

author-david-lam — David P. M. Lam (biography)

How can the impact of sustainability and other initiatives be scaled or amplified to achieve transformative change?

There are hundreds of promising sustainability initiatives emerging around the world. A sustainability initiative is, for example, a local food initiative from citizens and farmers who promote healthy and organic food production and consumption. Another example is the installation of solar panels by a community to support the use of renewable energies. Such initiatives provide potential solutions for urgent sustainability problems, for instance, biodiversity loss, climate change, social injustice, and poverty in rural areas or cities.

This blog post is based on a review of the literature to understand how sustainability transformations research is currently conceptualizing the scaling or amplifying of impact from initiatives.

Three principles for co-designing intervention strategies

August 24, 2022May 5, 2020

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:

Identifying existing initiatives and knowledge working towards the desired future
Identifying who is involved and leading different existing initiatives
Analysing how existing and possible future initiatives from local actors contribute to changing the state of system elements that need to change for reaching the desired vision or up to an intermediate state.