Processes

Three dimensions of context

gabriele-bammer_nov-2021
Gabriele Bammer (biography)

By Gabriele Bammer.

In research tackling complex societal and environmental problems, what is involved in taking context into account when aiming for more comprehensive understanding of a problem, as well as research support for policy and practice change so that the problem is better dealt with?

As outlined in my work developing Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S), considering context involves dealing with circumstances at three levels:

  • social or big picture, eg., the historical, political, economic, cultural, geographical and other circumstances
  • organizational, especially the structure and culture of the research and stakeholder organisations involved
  • individual, especially the positionality or identity of researchers and stakeholders.

Read more

Four lessons for pursuing participatory action-oriented PhD research inside the university system

By Raymond Hyma and Javier García Martínez.

authors_raymond-hyma_javier-garcia-martinez
1. Raymond Hyma (biography)
2. Javier García Martínez (biography)

What happens when participatory, relational, and action-oriented inquiry meets the institutional architecture of the PhD: tight timelines, individual authorship, and demands for methodological certainty? What does it mean to pursue participatory and action oriented research as a PhD project inside the university system?

We are PhD candidates in a university alliance connecting Australia and the UK, navigating participatory and action-oriented commitments across two institutional contexts. We noticed that much of the literature about participatory doctorates is written retrospectively, once the thesis is submitted and the mess has been tidied into a coherent story. Our contribution is different: we write from the middle, while decisions are still being negotiated, while constraints are still shaping the work, while we are still learning how to stay accountable to participatory values in real time.

So, what are we learning so far?

Read more

Navigating polarities: Fostering both/and mindsets in team science

By Gemma Jiang and Joanna Kaniewska.

authors_gemma-jiang_joanna-kaniewska
1. Gemma Jiang (biography)
2. Joanna Kaniewska (biography)

How can teams develop a mindset that makes differences productive, such as disciplinary differences in work processes, communication styles, underlying assumptions, behavioral norms, and more? In particular, how can teams move from an either/or mindset, which often leads to defensiveness driven by the need to prove that “I am right; you are wrong” to a both/and mindset, which fosters a learning culture in which differences become sources of generative tension that can propel creativity and collective insight?

One practical way to cultivate a both/and mindset is through working with polarities which are opposing yet interdependent tendencies. By integrating both tendencies, teams can move beyond either/or thinking and draw on a wider range of perspectives. We argue that developing the capacity to navigate polarities helps teams navigate differences more effectively overall.

In this i2Insights contribution, we describe three limiting beliefs drawn from our experience with team science coaching and show how they can be transformed through polarity thinking.

Read more

Building trust in researching about and engaging with underserved communities

By Katrina Messiha.

katrina-messiha
Katrina Messiha (biography)

How can we ensure that the many people whose lives are shaped by homelessness, migration, poverty, trauma, mental illness, caring responsibilities, social isolation and other contributors to marginalisation are adequately represented and well engaged with in relevant research?

This is important because if some lives are missing from the evidence base, they may also be missing from the services, policies and practices built upon it. But what happens when researchers try to engage people whose previous encounters with healthcare, welfare, housing, immigration or other public systems, including research, may have been difficult, exhausting or even harmful?

The usual language used to describe such people is “hard to reach,” “seldom heard” or “difficult to engage.” These phrases may be commonly used and well intended, but they can hide a pressing question: Where does trust already exist and how can research begin there?

Read more

Cultivating epistemic humility in research teams

By Faye Miller.

faye-miller_2025
Faye Miller (biography)

What makes it so challenging for research teams to be truly receptive to being wrong? And what can teams do to make doubt expressible and useful?

Being aware that knowledge is always situational, incomplete, and prone to error, as well as the willingness to hold opinions tentatively, be receptive to change, and recognise the boundaries of understanding, are all components of epistemic humility. Humility about what one knows and can know is an intellectual quality in individual researchers. Yet epistemic humility also has a structural dimension: which doubts get expressed, whose knowledge is heard, and how teams handle what they don’t yet know, are challenges that go beyond the individual researcher to shape how research teams function.

This i2Insights contribution is an attempt to highlight two challenges that need to be addressed:

  • the confidence trap, built on the pressure to exude certainty, and
  • the silence trap, arising from the social dynamics that can suppress productive doubt.

Read more

Tinkering workshops: Exploring children’s perceptions of problems and potential solutions

By Ina Opitz, Melanie Kryst, Pia von den Benken and Audrey Podann.

authors_opitz_kryst_benken_podann
1. Ina Opitz (biography)
2. Melanie Kryst (biography)
3. Pia von den Benken (biography)
4. Audrey Podann (biography)

How can children’s everyday experiences and perceptions of problems and solutions be made accessible for potential inclusion in transdisciplinary research? How can these processes also be used to familiarise children with the fundamentals of transdisciplinarity?

We have developed a three-hour “tinkering workshop,” based on design science principles, to encourage children to think about their environment and identify problems and solutions in a playful and creative way.

Our tinkering workshop is suitable for children aged between 9 and 12 years. We have tried it out in four workshops with a total of 56 children, focusing on the problem of plastic waste.

Read more

Transdisciplinarity in education: Aligning conceptualisation, configuration and competencies

By Hussein Zeidan.

hussein-zeidan
Hussein Zeidan (biography)

How can we move from broad visions of transdisciplinarity to concrete educational practices that students can meaningfully engage with? What kinds of course designs genuinely support learning in complex, real‑world settings? And how do we ensure clarity, for both students and educators, about what these courses are meant to achieve?

These questions sit at the heart of many conversations among educators seeking to bring transdisciplinarity into their teaching practice. We want students to learn how to navigate complex problems, draw on multiple ways of knowing and develop the mindsets that allow them to work across boundaries with confidence. Yet the very flexibility that makes transdisciplinarity appealing can also make it difficult to design courses that are clear, supportive and aligned.

Read more

A communication framework for public engagement and impact

By Judith Friedlander and Tania Leimbach.

authors_judith-friedlander_tania_leimbach
1. Judith Friedlander (biography)
2. Tania Leimbach (biography)

How can researchers cut through ‘the infoglut’ to share their findings with communities? What communication strategies help raise the agenda of critical issues to drive impactful advocacy and action?

As researchers and practitioners, we want to better understand how to effectively frame critical issues in a hybrid media system, facilitate media uptake and engage the public in scalable change-making. To this end, we developed the MAVEN communication framework, which consists of:

  • Meta-frames (developing overarching concepts);
  • Actions and Applications (supporting local pilots and scalability);
  • Values (identifying shared community values and news values);
  • Evidence and Ethos (messaging from reputable stakeholders), and
  • News media (disseminating information within a hybrid media system).

Read more

Five structural levers to reopen feedback loops that are resistant to external evidence

By Lachlan S. McGill.

lachlan-mcgill
Lachlan S. McGill (biography)

When feedback loops have become resistant to external evidence, what are some potential ways of intervening to reopen them?

This i2Insights contribution builds on my previous post which covers understanding why feedback loops can become resistant to external evidence and how to diagnose such a structural problem.

Here I introduce five structural ways to intervene in such a closed feedback loop. These are structural levers, each targeting a different aspect of how signals flow, how authority is allocated, and how evaluative standards are defined.

One practical note before beginning. Applying the interventions below often requires institutional authority, coalition building, or regulatory support, so that isolated actors may not be able to deploy them fully, leaving the problematic dominant structure intact. The five levers describe what structural intervention looks like but are not a guarantee that it will succeed.

Read more

Understanding and diagnosing when feedback loops become resistant to external evidence

By Lachlan S. McGill.

lachlan-mcgill
Lachlan S. McGill (biography)

Why does better evidence sometimes fail to improve decision making? How can we tell if this is caused by feedback loops becoming resistant to external evidence?

Understanding how structural patterns become problematic

In most organisations, decisions are embedded in feedback loops that connect indicators, incentives, and authority structures. These loops determine what counts as success, which signals influence decisions, and how performance is evaluated over time.

When feedback loops are well aligned with system goals, they support learning. However, feedback loops can also evolve in ways that reinforce a narrow definition of success. This is generally associated with a system relying on a small number of indicators to guide decisions. Common examples include financial return on investment, productivity or output measures, growth targets, publication counts or grant income, and compliance indicators.

Read more

Boundaries as opportunities for learning

By Roger Duck and Jane Searles.

author_roger-duck_jane-searles
1. Roger Duck (biography)
2. Jane Searles (biography)

Think of a time when you noticed how different ‘they’ are from ‘us’. In that moment, did the relationship become more interesting and alive? Or did it flatten into what looked like a boundary – a barrier to be overcome or a connection to be engineered?

This i2Insights contribution is intended to stimulate your imagination by giving examples from practice of relationships between people and teams being treated as opportunities for learning, rather than boundaries.

Most readers of i2Insights work in research. We believe there is much of relevance here for any context in which people are working together, including research teams.

The context

We expand here on the idea that ‘a system boundary is simultaneously a process of drawing a distinction and identifying an active relationship of mutual learning’ (Duck and Searles 2021).

Read more

Navigating inter- and transdisciplinary PhD supervision: Practical questions for students and supervisors

By Erika Angarita, Anna Hajdu, Yanyan Huang, BinBin Pearce, Guadalupe Peres-Cajías, Hussein Zeidan and Yuanyuan Zhu.

authors_angarita_hajdu_huang_pearce_peres-cajías_zeidan_zhu
1. Erika Angarita; 2. Anna Hajdu; 3. Yanyan Huang; 4. BinBin Pearce; 5. Guadalupe Peres-Cajías; 6. Hussein Zeidan; 7. Yuanyuan Zhu (biographies)

How can a student and their supervisors develop a shared map for a PhD project when they come from different disciplinary traditions, hold different assumptions about knowledge and quality, and operate within institutional systems that are still largely structured around single disciplines? How can they navigate what may feel obvious to one and may be invisible to another?

We developed a structured checklist of questions designed to support supervision conversations and reduce tensions resulting from unspoken assumptions.The checklist aims to be a guide for thoughtful, ongoing reflection between supervisors and doctoral students. These questions cover five areas where misunderstandings commonly arise:

  • Epistemology: How each supervisor and student understands knowledge, methods, and validity.
  • Institutional support and expectations: The context shaping what is possible.
  • Complexity management: Working with uncertainty and external partners.
  • Career orientation and identity: Finding a place within (or beyond) academia.
  • Dissemination pathways: Deciding how and where inter- and transdisciplinary work has an impact.

Read more