State-of-the-blog

By Gabriele Bammer

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

This is a blog for researchers who:

   • want better concepts and methods for understanding and acting on complex real-world problems – problems like refugee crises, global climate change, and inequality.
   • are intrigued by the messiness of how components of a problem interact, how context can be all-important and how power can stymie or facilitate action.
   • understand that complex problems do not have perfect solutions; instead that “best possible” or “least worst” solutions are more realistic aims.
   • enjoy wrangling with unknowns to better manage, or even head-off, unintended adverse consequences and unpleasant surprises.

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By Gabriele Bammer

The aim of this site is to host a global conversation about… well one of the challenges is that we don’t yet have an agreed name for our topic.

This is a conversation for you if your research does some of the following:

• Gets people from different disciplines working together
• Builds models of complex social and environmental problems
• Helps policy makers use research evidence
• Figures out ways to manage value conflicts
• Finds ways to identify unknown unknowns
• Maps interconnections between problem elements
• Works with business to build better products
• Involves community groups in defining the problem
• Worries about adverse unintended consequences
• Realises that context matters.

I think about these practices as integration and implementation sciences. You might call them systems thinking, action research, interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity, implementation science, post-normal science, mode 2 research, project management, complex systems science or a host of other terms.

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