Varvara Nikulina – Integration and Implementation Insights

Designing a rapid participatory scenario planning process

January 30, 2024January 30, 2024

By Giles Thomson and Varvara Nikulina

authors_giles-thomson_varvara-nikulina — 1. Giles Thomson (biography)
2. Varvara Nikulina (biography)

How can transdisciplinary researchers efficiently and effectively support diverse and time-poor actors in participatory scenario planning processes?

Scenario planning is a useful tool for policy development, especially for contexts with high uncertainty and complexity as described by Bonnie McBain in her i2Insights contribution, Designing scenarios to guide robust decisions. However, participatory scenario planning takes time, as pointed out by Maike Hamann and colleagues in their i2Insights contribution, Participatory scenario planning.

To address this challenge, we designed, tested and evaluated a rapid scenario planning method for a regional sustainability transition. In this case, the regional authority (host organization) wanted to increase collaboration and strengthen the link between municipal spatial planning and regional development by building consensus on the region’s most important development issues over a 30-year horizon to 2050.

Understanding researcher positionality using the insider-outsider continuum

October 16, 2024December 14, 2021

By Rebecca Laycock Pedersen and Varvara Nikulina

authors_rebecca-laycock-pedersen_varvara-nikulina — 1. Rebecca Laycock Pedersen (biography)
2. Varvara Nikulina (biography)

How can researchers express their positionality? What does positionality mean?

In working at the interface of science and society, researchers play many different roles, even within a single project, as, for example:

bridge builders (as described by Rod Lawrence in his blog post),
policy advisers (as described by Karin Ingold), and
activists (as described by Dorothy Broom).

As researchers, our role within a project is a part of our ‘positionality,’ or our social position. Positionality as defined by Agar (1996) is whether one sees oneself as an outsider, a ‘neutral’ investigator, or something else. Because of the many hats researchers often wear, scrutinising “aspects usually taken for granted and […] [being] aware of the role of a scientist as an intervener” (Fazey et al., 2018, p. 57) is vital.

A framework for identifying diversity in epistemic communities, linguistic variety and culture

August 24, 2025November 2, 2021

By Varvara Nikulina, Johan Larson Lindal, Henrikke Baumann, David Simon, and Henrik Ny

authors_varvara-nikulina_johan-larson-lindal_henrikke-baumann_david-simon_henrik-n — 1. Varvara Nikulina; 2. Johan Larson Lindal; 3. Henrikke Baumann; 4. David Simon; 5. Henrik Ny (biographies)

How can facilitators take into account diversity stemming from epistemic communities, linguistic variety and culture when leading workshops aimed at co-production in transdisciplinary research?

Although facilitators are skilled in mitigating conflicting interests and ideas among participants, they are often poorly prepared for dealing with these other types of diversity.

We have developed a framework that allows diversity in epistemic standpoint, linguistic diversity and culture to be mapped in a workshop setting. This is illustrated in the figure below and each box in the framework is described next.

Epistemic standpoint

Epistemic communities or thought collectives are groups with shared and agreed forms of knowledge, thought styles or rationalities, and world views. These often differ from or even conflict with those of other groups. For example, engineers, social scientists, public servants and entrepreneurs are four different epistemic communities.