Integration and Implementation Insights
A global, comprehensive, living toolkit improving research, education and impact on complex real-world problems
By Jen Badham and Gabriele Bammer
What is a mental model? How do mental models influence interdisciplinary collaboration? What processes can help tease out differences in mental models?
Mental models
Let’s start with mental models. What does the word ‘chair’ mean to you? Do you have an image of a chair, perhaps a wooden chair with four legs and a back, an office chair with wheels, or possibly a comfortable lounge chair from which you watch television?
By Bev J. Holmes
The co-production or co-creation of research is not new – action based research traditions can lay claim to a long history, but are those of us involved in co-production doing enough to understand what it means?
In their work on public involvement, Antoine Boivin and colleagues (2014) note there is such widespread support for the rhetoric of co-production that we may dismiss (I would add not even acknowledge) the tensions that arise when professionals and lay people work together. Co-production in health research is similar. We need to work harder to say what we mean, mean what we say, and learn as we go.
By Stephen M. Fiore
How can we create new academic communities? I provide lessons from building the Science of Team Science (SciTS), a rapidly growing cross-disciplinary field of study. SciTS works to build an evidence-base and to develop translational applications to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of team-based research.
I particularly draw lessons from the recent 8th annual conference attended by approximately 200 people [Moderator update – In April 2026, an embedded link to the 8th annual conference in this sentence was no longer available and so the link structure has been left in place but the active link deleted: scienceofteamscience.org/2017-scits-conference]. The conference aimed to:
By Andrew Campbell
When we think of research infrastructure, it is easy to associate astronomers with telescopes, oceanographers with research vessels and physicists with particle accelerators.
But what sort of research infrastructure (if any) do we need in order to do more effective multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on big, complex, ‘wicked’ challenges like climate change or food security?
Some eminent colleagues and I argue in a new paper (Baron et al., 2017) that the answers include:
By Kristine Lund
In a previous blog post I described multivocality – ie., harnessing multiple voices – in interdisciplinary research and how research I was involved in (Suthers et al., 2013) highlighted pitfalls to be avoided. This blog post examines four ways in which epistemological engagement can be achieved. Two of these are positive and two may have both positive and negative aspects, depending on how the collaboration plays out.
Once a team begins analyzing a shared corpus from different perspectives — in our case, it was a corpus of people solving problems together — it’s the comparison of researchers’ respective analyses that can be a motor for productive epistemological encounters between the researchers.
By Kristine Lund
Many voices are expressed when researchers from different backgrounds come together to work on a new project and it may sound like cacophony. All those voices are competing to be heard. In addition, researchers make different assumptions about people and data and if these assumptions are not brought to light, the project can reach an impasse later on and much time can be wasted.
So how can such multivocality be positive and productive, while avoiding trouble? How can multiple voices be harnessed to not only achieve the project’s goals, but also to make scientific progress?
By Gabriele Bammer
If you want to undertake transdisciplinary research, where can you find relevant concepts and methods? Are there compilations or toolkits that are helpful?
I’ve identified eight relevant toolkits, which are described briefly below and in more detail in the journal GAIA’s Toolkits for Transdisciplinarity series.
One toolkit provides concepts and methods relevant to the full range of transdisciplinary research, while the others cover four key aspects: (i) collaboration, (ii) synthesis of knowledge from relevant disciplines and stakeholders, (iii) thinking systemically, and (iv) making change happen.
By Marianne Penker
Should a doctoral student specialise in transdisciplinary sustainable development research? What are the opportunities and challenges associated with undertaking a program that requires research integration and implementation?
At the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna in Austria, teams of PhD-students and academic supervisors collaborated with representatives from regions, cities, public authorities, businesses or civil society to solve pressing and often wicked sustainability problems. We learnt the following ten lessons.
By Jeff Foote
How can non-indigenous researchers work with indigenous communities to tackle complex socio-ecological issues in a way that is culturally appropriate and does not contribute to the marginalisation of indigenous interests and values?
These questions have long been considered by participatory action researchers, and are of growing relevance to mainstream science organisations, which are increasingly utilising cross-cultural research practices in recognition of the need to move beyond identifying ‘problems’ to finding ‘solutions’.
As an example, I borrow heavily from work with colleagues in a partnership involving the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (a government science institute), Hokianga Health Enterprise Trust (a local community owned health service) and the Hokianga community.
By Chris Riedy
What materials are needed to support the conduct of transdisciplinary research?
Transdisciplinary research is a bundle of interwoven social practices taking different forms in different contexts. As highlighted in one prominent version of social practice theory (Shove et al., 2012: 14), social practice has three elements:
By Rawiri Smith
Collaboration is important in New Zealand as a method of bringing communities together to work on complex problems. A useful collaborative model is the Powhiri, practiced by Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, for hundreds of years.
The formal welcome to an area in New Zealand is a Maori process known as the Powhiri. The Powhiri recognises the mana of all the participants. One of the most important values of the Maori people is manaaki, or caring for the mana of everyone. The Maori word mana means the importance associated with a person. The performance of a Powhiri acknowledges the importance of a person being welcomed to an area.
The deeper meaning behind the Powhiri process gives more meaning and indicates what should be occurring through the Powhiri.
By Gabriele Bammer
What are the ingredients of successful research collaboration? How can we make collaboration work when we are all getting busier?
One of the best guides to success in collaborative team work was produced by Michelle Bennett, Howard Gadlin and Samantha Levine-Findlay in 2010. Built on the experience of researchers at the US National Institutes of Health, they explored: preparing for collaboration, selecting team members, fostering trust, sharing credit, handling conflict and more.
An additional way of thinking about collaboration that I have found useful (Bammer 2008) is to consider it as a process of harnessing and managing differences.