Ontology – Integration and Implementation Insights

Navigating power: A partial pragmatic map

December 2, 2025December 2, 2025

By Katie Moon.

In research, how can we start to appreciate unexamined assumptions about what power is, where it resides, how it works, and who holds it, especially how these assumptions influence not only the problems we recognize, but the solutions we pursue? And importantly, who decides? How can we get a better idea of how power informs how we act: what interventions we attempt, whose knowledge we value, whose interests we centre, and what consequences we anticipate?

In this i2Insights contribution I provide an intentionally simplified orienting map that disaggregates power into six dimensions that mirror the ways researchers tend to separate and locate power into distinct domains to rationalise and evaluate interventions. I match these dimensions to three onto-epistemological frames—objective, constructionist, and relational—which were described in a previous i2Insights contribution A guide to ontology, epistemology, and philosophical perspectives for interdisciplinary researchers.

Insights into the science of complexity

January 9, 2026October 29, 2024

By Jean Boulton

What are the key ideas that define the science of complexity? How do they help us better understand our world so that we can engage more effectively?

The science of complexity conveys a view of the world as dynamic, richly interdependent and full of variety.

“A world – organic and emergent, shaped by history and context – naturally patterned, yet always in process” (Boulton 2024: 39).

Ilya Prigogine asked why classical physics and evolutionary biology seem to contradict each other. The word that brought these two sciences together and shaped the development of complexity theory, was ‘open’ (Prigogine 1977).

Situations that are open to their environments display emerging order in the form of patterns of relationships.

Practising responsible research within an Indigenous paradigm

May 21, 2024

By Norma Romm

What might it mean to practise responsible research within a postcolonial Indigenous paradigm? What is distinctive in terms of the conception of responsible research practice? How does research informed by this paradigm include responsiveness to the voices/spirit of the more-than-human world?

A postcolonial Indigenous paradigm as defined by scholars from a variety of geographical regions is offered as a way of doing research that expressly draws out and tries to revitalise the relational knowing-and-being processes of Indigenous communities in Africa, the Indigenous peoples of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and the USA (First Nations). These scholars (Indigenous, as well as non-Indigenous ones who can be regarded as allies) have tried to credentialise this research paradigm by expanding upon the underlying suggestion that processes of knowing are inextricably tied to ways of living (being in relation to others, human and more-than-human).

This implies a specific conception of responsibility to try to nurture (in all fields of our influence, including in research practices) relationships that can be considered reciprocal rather than exploitative (of other humans or of other species and of the land and its communities).

Understanding diversity primer: 3. Perceptions of good research

August 21, 2025May 5, 2022

By Gabriele Bammer

primer_diversity_3

How do different perceptions arise of what makes for ‘good’ research? How can researchers come to understand such differences and their impacts on how problems are framed, understood and responded to, as well as how they affect the ability of those contributing to the research to work together?

Differences arise because training in a discipline involves inculcating a specific way of investigating the world, including which types of questions are worth addressing; legitimate ways of gathering, analysing and interpreting data; standards for validation; and the role of values in the research process. Educating someone in a discipline aims to make the discipline’s specific approach to research ingrained and tacit.

Navigating intercultural relations in transdisciplinary practice: The partial overlaps framework

February 21, 2024July 6, 2021

By David Ludwig, Vitor Renck & Charbel N. El-Hani

authors_david-ludwig_vitor-renck_charbel-el-hani — 1. David Ludwig (biography)
2. Vitor Renck (biography)
3. Charbel N. El-Hani (biography)

How can local knowledge be effectively and fairly incorporated in transdisciplinary projects? How can such projects avoid “knowledge mining” and “knowledge appropriation” that recognize marginalized knowledge only where it is convenient for dominant actors and their goals? In addition, how can knowledge integration programs avoid being naive or even harmful by forcing Indigenous people into regimes of knowledge production that continue to be dominated by the perspectives of external researchers?

On the other hand, how can transdisciplinary projects avoid an exclusive focus on difference that risks creating an artificial divide between Indigenous/local and scientific knowledge and that contributes to further marginalization by denying the very possibility of meaningful dialogue?

Responding to unacknowledged disciplinary differences with the Toolbox dialogue method

October 18, 2023March 2, 2021

By Graham Hubbs, Michael O’Rourke, Steven Hecht Orzack

authors_graham-hubbs_michael-orourke_steven-hecht-orzack — 1. Graham Hubbs (biography)
2. Michael O’Rourke (biography)
3. Steven Hecht Orzack (biography)

Have you collaborated with people on a complex project and wondered why it is so difficult? Perhaps you’ve asked yourself, “Do my collaborators even conceive of the project and its goals in the way I do?” Projects involving collaborators from different disciplines or professions seem almost ready made to generate this kind of bewilderment. Collaborators on cross-disciplinary projects like these often ask different kinds of questions and pursue different kinds of answers.

This confusion can bedevil cross-disciplinary research. The allure of such research is its promise of solving complex problems by bringing together a variety of perspectives that when combined lead to solutions that any one perspective would fail to find.

A guide for interdisciplinary researchers: Adding axiology alongside ontology and epistemology

January 19, 2021May 22, 2018

By Peter Deane

Can philosophical insights be useful for interdisciplinary researchers in extending their thinking about the role of values and knowledge in research? More broadly, can a model or heuristic simplify some of the complexity in understanding how research works?

It’s common for interdisciplinary researchers to consider ontology and epistemology, two major arms of philosophical inquiry into human understanding, but axiology – a third major arm – is oft overlooked.

I start by describing axiology, then detail work by Michael Patterson and Daniel Williams (1998) who place axiology alongside ontology and epistemology. The outcome herein is to cautiously eject and then present a part of their work as a heuristic that may help interdisciplinary researchers to extend understanding on philosophical commitments that underlie research.

A guide to ontology, epistemology, and philosophical perspectives for interdisciplinary researchers

December 18, 2024May 2, 2017

By Katie Moon and Deborah Blackman

authors_katie-moon_deborah-blackman — 1. Katie Moon (biography)
2. Deborah Blackman (biography)

How can understanding philosophy improve our research? How can an understanding of what frames our research influence our choices? Do researchers’ personal thoughts and beliefs shape research design, outcomes and interpretation?

These questions are all important for social science research. Here we present a philosophical guide for scientists to assist in the production of effective social science (adapted from Moon and Blackman, 2014).