Community Member

Stories of self, us, and now: A tool for navigating uncertainty

November 25, 2025November 18, 2025

By Gemma Jiang, Alexis Niki, Darius Melvin and Sarah Hind.

authors_jiang_niki_melvin_hind — 1. Gemma Jiang (biography)
2. Alexis Niki (biography)
3. Darius Melvin (biography)
4. Sarah Hind (biography)

In times of uncertainty, especially when the role of research, as well as research funding are under threat, how can research teams effectively respond? How can storytelling help?

We show how Marshall Ganz’s (2009) Stories of Self, Us, and Now framework can move groups from individual experiences of uncertainty (Self) to shared meaning (Us), and toward concrete action steps (Now).

Workshop Context

Leadership team members from a large transdisciplinary, cross-institutional research center, entering the fifth (final) year of their funding cycle, partnered with an external team science expert

Open Systems Theory: Producing successful strategic plans

December 8, 2025November 11, 2025

By Merrelyn Emery.

How can we produce strategic plans that people actually want to implement? How can the process create a sense of belonging and allow members of communities and organizations to take control over their own affairs?

Fred Emery and I tackled these questions while producing Open System Theory.

Open Systems Theory: The framework

Open Systems Theory has two basic concepts:

1. The world consists of systems with permeable boundaries, ie., systems which are open to their environments. This gives us co-evolution, the mutual determination of system and environment.

A self-assessment checklist to improve interdisciplinarity in research projects / Un questionnaire d’auto-évaluation pour améliorer les projets de recherche interdisciplinaire

December 2, 2025November 4, 2025

By Flore Nonchez.

A French version of this post is available

How can researchers improve the quality of their interdisciplinary proposals? What would help in clarifying project formulation, enriching description, maximizing relevance, facilitating workplan implementation (by anticipating possible difficulties) and enhancing impact?

The self-assessment checklist provided below aims to help project leaders and their research teams systematically consider the specific interdisciplinary aspects of an interdisciplinary research project, whatever their original discipline or experience of interdisciplinarity.

Four tips for developing norms for collaboration agreements

October 28, 2025

By Edgar Cardenas.

edgar-cardenas_2025 — Edgar Cardenas (biography)

Norms are the foundational building blocks for collaboration agreements. Hence, we must consider what’s an effective way for teams to develop the norms underpinning a collaboration agreement? How can teams build on experience and avoid getting bogged down when negotiating norms?

In helping teams to develop norms that enable productive collaborations, I use Richard Hackman’s definition of norms as “shared agreements among members about what behaviors are valued in the group, and what behaviors are not. They refer only to behavior, including things members say, not to unexpressed private thoughts and feelings” (Hackman, 2011, p.103).

In other words, norms that help you collaborate better must be grounded by clearly identifiable behaviors and team members must agree to abide by these norms. When developing a norm, the team then has to ask: “Is the behavior clear enough that team members have a shared understanding of the specific behavior?” and “Do we agree to using this norm?”

Four conditions for co-designing for First Nations leadership

November 11, 2025October 21, 2025

By Jessica Wegener, Barry Williams, Jacqueline Gothe and Sarah Jane Jones.

authors_wegener_williams_gothe_jones — 1. Jessica Wegener (biography)
2. Barry Williams (biography)
3. Jacqueline Gothe (biography)
4. Sarah Jane Jones (biography)

How can research effectively strengthen Indigenous leadership and incorporate respectful design to support Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination?

We retrospectively reflected on our experience of working together in a project focused on land and fire management in a specific region in Australia, a project that involved Indigenous Cultural Fire Practitioners, Elders, and community members, as well as Local Aboriginal Land Councils, local councils and government agencies (Gothe et al., 2025). This reflexive analysis aimed to understand and share what we have learned as participants in this Indigenous project as a contribution to the complex work of ensuring meaningful ways to support Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and the use of co-design in Indigenous-led land-based projects situated in urban contexts.

A library guide to support transdisciplinarity

November 6, 2025October 14, 2025

By ANU Library Guide Working Group.

authors_anu-library-guide_working-group — Author biographies

What tools can libraries develop to support transdisciplinary education and research? What are the challenges and requirements to make such tool development happen?

Here we describe a library guide (commonly abbreviated to LibGuide), a tool often developed by individual libraries to showcase their resources on a particular subject and to provide a consistent pedagogical approach to such subject-specific resources.

The library guide that we developed focused on transdisciplinary problem solving and aims to provide introductory materials for students and academic staff across our university (The Australian National University). In particular, it supports the introduction of a university-wide educational program to ensure that all undergraduates develop skills allowing them to work with others to understand and creatively address amorphous and complex problems.

Three ways to design interdisciplinary collaborations

November 4, 2025October 7, 2025

By Benjamin Hofmann and Milena Wiget.

authors_benjamin-hofmann_milena-wiget — 1. Benjamin Hofmann (biography)
2. Milena Wiget (biography)

What options do researchers have in designing interdisciplinary collaborations? How can researchers understand the connections between their own discipline-based research and less familiar research in other disciplines?

Types of interdisciplinary research collaborations

Solving complex sustainability and other problems often requires the integration of different disciplinary perspectives, which is challenging. To address this challenge, we developed a simple typology that features three types of interdisciplinary research collaborations, which can be implemented at any stage of the research process, as described, and shown in the figure, below.

Common base (type I): Research from different disciplines is integrated at one stage of the research process and then separated into disciplinary research at the next stage.

Six elements of effective co-design

October 7, 2025September 30, 2025

By Will Allen.

What does co-design for tackling complex challenges look like in practice?

Co-design is a collective way of navigating complexity, taking different forms depending on context. The following six elements are a reflection on patterns I’ve seen emerge through practice, especially in settings where multiple perspectives matter.

1. Starting with shared grounding: Creating early alignment through shared values, context, and purpose

In many collaborative projects, there’s a tendency to begin by defining tasks – what needs doing, by whom, and when. But in complex settings, where multiple perspectives and values come into play, it’s often more important to begin with relationships. It helps to understand where people are coming from, what matters to them, and how they see the purpose.

Lessons for transformative research from co-creating a conference without a fixed plan

November 27, 2025September 23, 2025

By Thomas Bruhn.

In developing a conference, what does it take for people to leave their comfort zones to co-design something new? What possibilities does this open up for more meaningful conference designs? What are the broader lessons for transformative research?

In 2023–2024, I worked with the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to develop a conference format for the German sustainability research community – something to help re-establish connection after the isolating COVID pandemic years, and to strengthen interdisciplinary exchange. The Ministry wanted something new and innovative.

Early in the conversation, I sensed hesitation when unconventional, interactive conference formats were suggested.

Four core concepts for expanding a systems view to system dynamics

September 18, 2025September 16, 2025

By Andrei Savu.

Once you understand the basic concepts underpinning systems, what other concepts are key to understanding system dynamics?

While systems thinking teaches you to see and shape system structure, system dynamics focuses on understanding nonlinear behavior over time. An additional four key concepts are added to five core concepts in systems thinking described in a companion post.

The four additional key concepts for understanding system dynamics are: stocks, flows, delays and dynamic behavior patterns.

Stocks and flows

Stocks and flows are foundational concepts, essential for analyzing and designing effective systems.

Five core concepts for understanding systems

October 7, 2025September 16, 2025

By Andrei Savu.

What concepts are key to understanding systems?

A system is a set of interdependent elements whose coordinated interactions give rise to an outcome none of the pieces can deliver alone. The key word is relationship: change the relationships and the behavior of the whole shifts, even if every component remains identical.

Five core concepts for systems thinking are: purpose, boundary, feedback, leverage and emergence.

Purpose and boundary

Every system exists to fulfill a purpose, defined by boundaries that separate internal elements from external factors. These two fundamental concepts—purpose and boundary—determine how we understand, analyze, and influence systems of all types.

Six tips for using research to influence policy

September 9, 2025

By David R. Garcia.

david-garcia — David R. Garcia (biography)

How can academics, researchers, and educators become skilled at the craft of engaging with policy makers? Who should they aim to engage with and what are some key factors in engaging effectively?

Based on my experiences as a US legislative staffer, state policy director, statewide political candidate and professor, here are my six best tips.

Tip #1: Be prepared to work with politicians. Yes, politicians

In academic contexts, “policymaker” is an ill-defined term that is often applied to all policy actors, and does not account for relevant distinctions between different policy actors.