Institutionalisation – Integration and Implementation Insights

HIBAR research: What is it and how can it be reinvigorated?

June 30, 2020June 30, 2020

By Lorne A. Whitehead, Scott H. Slovic and Janet E. Nelson

mosaic_lorne-whitehead_scott-slovic_janet-nelson — 1. Lorne A. Whitehead (biography)
2. Scott H. Slovic (biography)
3. Janet E. Nelson (biography)

How can we recognize and encourage investigations that holistically fuse fundamental and applied research on a problem of interest in a manner that is both (a) integrative and recursive and (b) highly collaborative with non-university experts?

Recognition

We refer to this form of research as “Highly Integrative Basic And Responsive” (HIBAR). It adds deep university-society engagement to the work that Donald Stokes named “Pasteur’s quadrant” (Stokes 1997) and others have called “use-inspired basic research”.

As shown in the figure below, basic research projects emphasize one end of a range of research excellence, while applied research projects emphasize the other. The two distributions overlap only weakly, so the intermediate portion is often underemphasized. HIBAR research fills and bridges that gap, linking basic and the practical research in an iterative, recursive manner.

Finding expertise in research integration and implementation to tackle complex problems

May 22, 2020May 19, 2020

By Gabriele Bammer

Author - Gabriele Bammer — Gabriele Bammer (biography)

When you are pulling together a team to tackle a complex societal or environmental problem, where can you find the expertise to deal with:

Research integration challenges such as: deciding which disciplines and stakeholders to include, setting limits around the problem, dealing with competing problem definitions, managing intractable unknowns, and synthesising different perspectives?
Research implementation challenges such as: identifying likely change agents, taking context into account, developing tools and processes for research to support more effective actions to ameliorate the problem?

Facilitating serendipity for interdisciplinary research

June 23, 2020January 21, 2020

By Catherine Lyall

author-catherine-lyall — Catherine Lyall (biography)

How can institutions facilitate the serendipitous encounters that so often appear to characterise interdisciplinary careers? Is there an inherent hypocrisy in university leaders, research funders and policymakers claiming that they want to facilitate interdisciplinarity and then not creating the conditions that experienced interdisciplinarians say they need in order to foster this style of working?

Here I examine the importance of informal interactions, physical locations, the ‘small stuff’ and ‘slow research.’

Research integration and implementation: Building resources and community

February 13, 2020December 17, 2019

By Gabriele Bammer

This is the fourth annual “state of the blog” review.

For the past four years the blog has worked well, achieving significant growth. In 2020 we’re planning improvements, mainly to make specific resources easier to find and access. In 2019 there were a number of firsts, including surpassing 250 blog posts and 300 authors. Check out the nine blog posts published in 2019 that achieved more than 750 views. And if you are looking for something thought-provoking to read over, what for many, will be a holiday break, see below for a selection of gems.

What motivates researchers to become transdisciplinary and what are the implications for career development?

January 10, 2020November 12, 2019

By Maria Helena Guimarães, Olivia Bina and Christian Pohl

Author - Maria Helena Guimarães — Maria Helena Guimarães (biography)

If disciplines shape scientific research by forming the primary institutional and cognitive units in academia, how do researchers start being interested in and working with a transdisciplinary approach? How does this influence their career development?

Funding transformative research: 10 key stages

January 16, 2020June 18, 2019

By Flurina Schneider

How can funding programmes maximize the potential of transformative research that seeks to make a real difference? How can funders support a more hands-on approach to societal challenges such as ecological crises? A group of Swiss transdisciplinary researchers and funding-agency staff identified 10 overlapping stages and their key ingredients. The stages are also described in the figure below.

Improving the i2Insights blog: Your ideas are welcome!

February 13, 2020May 14, 2019

By Gabriele Bammer and Peter Deane

As a reader, are there aspects of this i2Insights blog that you would like to see changed? Do you have specific suggestions for improvements? Are there things that work well and that you would like to see continue?

We are currently reviewing how to improve the blog and how easily the resources it provides can be found. Your input will help us think about changes to incorporate and how to use our time in producing the blog to maximum effect. We briefly set the context for the blog and then pose a series of questions that outline the changes we are considering. All input is welcome. You can address one or more of the questions below or raise other issues. You can post in the comments section or contact us privately via: https://i2insights.org/contact/.

A manifesto of interdisciplinarity

April 17, 2020March 19, 2019

By Rick Szostak

Is there a shared understanding of what interdisciplinarity is and how (and why) it is best pursued that can be used by the international community of scholars of interdisciplinarity, to both advocate for and encourage interdisciplinary scholarship? Is there consensus on what we are trying to achieve and how this is best done that can form the basis of cogent advice to interdisciplinary teachers and researchers regarding strategies that have proven successful in the past?

I propose a ‘Manifesto of Interdisciplinarity’ with nine brief points, as listed below.

Strengthening the ecosystem for effective team science: A case study from University of California, Irvine, USA

June 8, 2020February 19, 2019

By Dan Stokols, Judith S. Olson, Maritza Salazar and Gary M. Olson

How can an ecosystem approach help in understanding and improving team science? How can this work in practice?

An Ecosystem Approach

Collaborations among scholars from different fields and their community partners are embedded in a multi-layered ecosystem ranging from micro to macro scales, and from local to more remote regions. Ecosystem levels include:

Building a global community to improve how complex real-world problems are tackled

February 13, 2020December 18, 2018

By Gabriele Bammer

This is the third annual “state of the blog” review.

As the blog moves into its 4th year, how well is it achieving its goals? Is it succeeding in sharing concepts and methods across the multiple groups addressing complex real-world problems – groups including inter- and trans- disciplinarians, systems thinkers, action researchers and implementation scientists, as well as the myriad researchers working on complex environmental, health and other societal problems, who do not necessarily identify with these networks? Is it providing a forum to connect these disparate groups and individuals? Is it helping to build an international research community to improve how complex real-world problems are tackled?

Four strategies for improving knowledge exchange among scientists and decision-makers

May 19, 2020October 16, 2018

By Chris Cvitanovic

How can we improve knowledge exchange among scientists and decision-makers to facilitate evidence informed decision-making? Of course there is no one size fits all approach, but here I outline four strategies that could be adapted and implemented across different contexts: (i) knowledge co-production, (ii) embedding, (iii) knowledge brokers, and (iv) boundary organisations. These are illustrated in the figure below.

Knowledge co-production

Perhaps the most widely advocated approach to achieving improved knowledge exchange, knowledge co-production refers to the process whereby decision-makers actively participate in scientific research programs from the onset, collaborating with researchers throughout every aspect of the study including design, implementation and analysis.

Ten steps to strengthen the environmental humanities

April 15, 2020September 11, 2018

By Christoph Kueffer and Marcus Hall

How might the environmental humanities complement insights offered by the environmental sciences, while also remaining faithful to their goal of addressing complexity in analysis and searching for solutions that are context-dependent and pluralistic?

There is a long and rich tradition of scholarship in the humanities addressing environmental problems. Included under the term ‘environmental studies’ until recently, fields such as the arts, design, history, literary studies, and philosophy are now gathering under the new umbrella of the ‘environmental humanities’.