Processes

Six lessons from Iran for strengthening cross-disciplinary research

By Reza Dehnavieh

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Reza Dehnavieh (biography)

How can universities in countries which have centralised and traditional discipline-based systems encourage cross-disciplinary research and education?

Here I describe lessons from the work of the Institute for Futures Studies in Health, which is an Iran-based organization specializing in foresight activities in Iran’s health system. The Institute is affiliated with Kerman University of Medical Sciences, and was launched in 2012. The Institute utilizes knowledge management in combination with the development of a more desirable future as the key concept at the core of its identity and follows four main goals:

  1. evidence-based decision-making,
  2. networking among stakeholders within and outside the health sector,
  3. developing capabilities and empowerment of stakeholders, and
  4. outlining strategic perspectives on health.

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How to organize an “all-hands” meeting

By Gemma Jiang, Diane Boghrat and Jenny Grabmeier

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1. Gemma Jiang (biography)
2. Diane Boghrat (biography)
3. Jenny Grabmeier (biography)

What is an “all-hands” meeting? What’s required to assemble an effective planning team? What should the planning team consider in setting parameters for the meeting?

What is an “all-hands” meeting?

Here we consider all-hands meetings in the context of our experience with a large cross-disciplinary institute, where members are geographically distributed. An annual all-hands meeting is an effective mechanism many such organizations employ to bring all members together in person.

An all-hands meeting differs from a science conference in two main ways. First, its participants are identified members within the boundary of the organization. It is usually not open to a wider audience. Second, its topic areas extend beyond the research projects supported by the organization. Such topics can include strategic planning among leadership, community building among early career researchers, professional and interpersonal capacity building topics, and development of team science competency.

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Making the Nominal Group Technique more accessible

By Jason Olsen

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Jason Olsen (biography)

Looking to gain real insights from those with lived experience about a specific topic? Interested in a low-cost method that fosters equal participation and discussion over participant domination in a research focus group? Want to know about modifications to make pan-disability (ie., working with participants with different impairments) research focus groups more inclusive?

The Nominal Group Technique developed by Ven and Delbecq (1972) has been used for more than 50 years. Key to its success is the posing of a single unambiguous and unbiased question about a problem that can generate a wide range of answers. The process structures the meeting to enable critical dimensions of the question to be identified, ranked and rated in a way that:

  • limits the influence of the researcher leading the project, as well as the influence of attendees,
  • allows participants to clarify the question’s dimensions and gaps,
  • increases the likelihood of equal participation for all group members,
  • affords equal influence to different, and potentially conflicting, values and ideas.

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Understanding the links between coloniality, forced displacement and knowledge production

By Alemu Tesfaye and Truphena Mukuna

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1. Alemu Tesfaye (biography)
2. Truphena Mukuna (biography)

What is the relationship between coloniality, forced displacement and knowledge production? How is this relevant to decolonization efforts?

The history of forced displacement can be traced back to the colonial era, during which European powers established colonies in various parts of the world, displacing and often subjugating indigenous populations. The displacement of indigenous peoples often involved the forced removal from their ancestral lands and the disruption of their social and cultural systems.

In this context, knowledge production was used to justify and legitimize the displacement of indigenous populations. European colonizers created and disseminated knowledge that portrayed indigenous peoples as “primitive” or “uncivilized,” and therefore in need of “civilizing” through the imposition of European values and systems. This knowledge served to legitimize colonial policies of forced displacement and cultural assimilation.

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Six lessons for newly-forming large research consortia

By Daniel Black and Geoff Bates

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1. Daniel Black (biography)
2. Geoff Bates (biography)

What are some key tips for establishing new, large consortia to tackle complex global challenges? What are the best ways to coordinate large groups of researchers, practitioners and publics towards a shared goal?

Describing this type of research is cumbersome. As a shorthand we have started to use the terms ‘LMITs’ (pronounced ‘limits’) and ‘New LMITs’ to denote similarly characterised projects and teams that are: ‘Newly forming’, ‘Large-scale’, ‘Mission-orientated’, and ‘Inter- and Trans-disciplinary’.

Drawing on our own experience over the past three years of establishing a New LMIT, we suggest six primary inter-related recommendations for other New LMITs, and for those who fund or support such research groups:

1. Factor in (far) more time than you might expect
2. Seek out funders who understand

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Children as research actors

By Frédéric Darbellay and Zoe Moody

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1. Frédéric Darbellay (biography)
2. Zoe Moody (biography)

From a transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge perspective, how can children’s capacity for reflection, analysis, curiosity, discovery and creativity be recognized? Why and how can the involvement of children in the research process be promoted by giving them a co-researcher status? Based on our experience of research on and with children, we present the main issues and potential of this type of research.

1. Research with Children

Recent developments in the fields of childhood studies and children’s rights studies highlight the benefits of carrying out research with and for children rather than about them.

Research with children is based on a horizontal model of knowledge production, that recognizes children as the real experts on what it is like to “be a child.”

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Six lessons for connecting evidence to policy and practice in the Global South

By Fréjus Thoto

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Fréjus Thoto (biography)

How can the ecosystem of evidence use in policy and practice work better in Global South countries such as Benin?

Here I provide six lessons drawn from activities undertaken by the African Center for Equitable Development (ACED), a non-profit think-and-do tank, located in Benin, West Africa. Our focus has been on the food and nutrition security sector.

Lesson 1: Access to policy-relevant evidence is still a big challenge

There is still much work to do in order to ensure that timely and policy-relevant evidence is produced and accessible to users. We have developed a national platform to consolidate and display the available statistical data, research findings, and evaluation findings. However, a platform alone is not enough, and research agenda setting, research-policy dialogues and other strategic activities are required.

Lesson 2: Involve governments at all levels in evidence-informed policymaking processes

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Challenges to science-policy-society interactions in transdisciplinary research

By Oghenekaro N. Odume, Akosua B. K. Amaka-Otchere, Blessing N. Onyima, Fati Aziz, Sandra B. Kushitor and Sokhna Thiam

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1. Oghenekaro N. Odume; 2. Akosua B. K. Amaka-Otchere; 3. Blessing N. Onyima; 4. Fati Aziz; 5. Sandra B. Kushitor; 6. Sokhna Thiam (biographies)

Why is transdisciplinary research that aims to co-produce knowledge across academic disciplines, policy contexts and societal domains often so difficult? What are the key challenges that need to be overcome?

We identified five key challenges when we analysed five projects implemented in nine African cities which were part of the Leading Integrated Research for Agenda 2030 in Africa (LIRA) program (Odume et al., 2021).

Challenge #1: Conceptual threshold crossing

Science-policy-society interactions require active engagement of diverse actors, often with different discursive language and epistemic backgrounds. Translating academic discourse into accessible everyday language can be challenging. In the same vein, policy and societal actors use discourse unfamiliar to academic actors.

Conceptual threshold crossing in terms of intellectual, ontological, and cognitive transformation is particularly challenging when projects are not just about understanding problems or raising awareness, but about true co-production of knowledge and co-ownership of the resulting outcomes.

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Four approaches to shifting mindsets for decolonising knowledge

By Peter Taylor and Crystal Tremblay

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1. Peter Taylor (biography)
2. Crystal Tremblay (biography)

In the context of knowledge for development, what does it require to deconstruct the dominant narratives and personal privileges embodied in our race, class, gender, etc.? And, in a knowledge landscape littered with potential minefields, how do we go about shifting the mindsets that shape the ways in which ‘we’ understand the world and our subsequent values, behaviours, and attitudes?

Drawing on our own experiences, and learning that has emerged through many valued interactions with others, we have identified four approaches which we believe may help to make a difference.

1. Identifying what, and whose, knowledge is valued, counted, and integrated into development processes

Researchers often fail to recognise or value the different knowledges needed to address some of the world’s greatest challenges, because of where knowledge resides and who has generated it.

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Using the arts to flip understanding: An arts intervention for non-arts researchers

By Margot Greenlee, Martina Jerant and Veronica Dittman Stanich

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1. Margot Greenlee (biography)
2. Martina Jerant (biography)
3. Veronica Dittman Stanich (biography)

What do the arts bring to interdisciplinary research? Can arts practices lead STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) researchers to new insights on their work?

We—a choreographer-and-professional-facilitator (Margot), a scientist-athlete-facilitator-entrepreneur (Martina), and a dancer-turned-arts-researcher (Veronica)—had a hunch that the arts have something to offer STEMM researchers: a different understanding of their own work.

We posited that thoughts are intertwined with actions, and when there is no opportunity to do things differently, it’s hard to think differently—to get a fresh perspective. By “actions”, we mean the practices researchers do every day as part of their work: for example, read, collect data, analyze data, present ideas in written form, revise that writing. Whatever the typical practices of a field or discipline are, as researchers train and eventually become experts in that field, its practices become habitual.

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Towards a theory of change to institutionalise integration experts and expertise

By The Aeschiried Integrators

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Author biographies

Integration experts and expertise are crucial for realising the full potential of inter- and transdisciplinary research. However, the expertise of those who lead integration is poorly recognized in the current academic system and these academics often experience a range of impediments to their careers. What can be done to recognise integration experts and expertise and to support the careers of such experts?

We define integration experts as specialists “who lead, administer, manage, monitor, assess, accompany, and/or advise others on integration” in order to achieve the full potential of inter- and transdisciplinary research (Hoffmann et al. 2022).

This i2Insights contribution presents the results of a pilot workshop held in Aeschiried, a mountain village in Switzerland, in February 2023 to develop a theory of change focused on Germany and Switzerland to achieve the following:

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Lessons for strengthening community-university partnerships

By David D. Hart, Bridie McGreavy, Anthony Sutton, Gabrielle V. Hillyer and Darren J. Ranco

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1. David D. Hart; 2. Bridie McGreavy; 3. Anthony Sutton; 4. Gabrielle V. Hillyer; 5. Darren J. Ranco (biographies)

In an increasingly polarized world, how can partnerships between communities and universities strengthen the kinds of deliberative and democratic practices that might help address many local and global challenges? How can such partnerships improve practices that involve listening and responding across differences (the deliberative part)? How can they help find ways to make shared decisions and take joint actions, knowing that complete agreement or mutual understanding may never be possible (the democratic part)?

We have reflected on our partnerships with people from Maine communities and Wabanaki (“People of the Dawnland”) Tribal Nations in North America, especially regarding challenges faced by communities that harvest clams and other bivalve mollusks from the intertidal mudflats along the length of this region’s enormous coastline (Hart et al., 2022). Here we present some of the key lessons from that work.

Common ground?

Some challenges facing local communities are less about competing ideologies and more about pragmatic concerns such as reducing water pollution, which can make it easier for people to listen to and learn about each other in the context of community planning.

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