Positionality – Integration and Implementation Insights

Preparing interdisciplinary research teams for transdisciplinary co-production: A framework and diagnostic questions

August 5, 2025June 17, 2025

By Emma Ligtermoet, Claudia Munera-Roldan, Cathy Robinson, Zaynel Sushil and Peat Leith.

authors_ligtermoet_munera-roldan_robinson_sushil_leith — 1. Emma Ligtermoet; 2. Claudia Munera-Roldan; 3. Cathy Robinson; 4. Zaynel Sushil; 5. Peat Leith (biographies)

How can interdisciplinary teams rapidly and collectively diagnose and design effective engagement approaches as they prepare for engaged (transdisciplinary) research? How can they build bridges with non-researcher societal actors to understand differences in language, methodology and even fundamental philosophies about ways and means of understanding the world?

We have developed a framework with context as the central feature, as this shapes all aspects of collaborative work. Context is then used to centre exploration of interconnected elements of positionality, purpose, power and process (4Ps).

Shared deliberation of the research context and the interconnected 4Ps requires an effective collective learning environment, which is upheld by the pillars of equity, trust, openness and inclusivity, and reflexivity.

Transforming North-South academic collaborations through collective reflexivity

March 18, 2025February 18, 2025

By Adriana Moreno Cely, Kewan Mertens and Viola Nilah Nyakato.

authors_adriana-moreno-cely_kewan-mertens_viola-nilah-nyakato — 1. Adriana Moreno Cely (biography)
2. Kewan Mertens (biography)
3. Viola Nilah Nyakato (biography)

How can we challenge entrenched colonial dynamics in North-South academic collaborations and foster meaningful transformation? How can we move away from power asymmetries where Northern partners assume roles as donors and agenda-setters, leaving Southern collaborators as recipients and implementers? How can we promote equitable knowledge production, allowing diverse voices to speak while being open to listening to them?

In grappling with these challenges in our own collaborations, we used collective reflexive dialogues to unpack our complicity in reproducing problematic power dynamics.

Three lessons for mainstreaming transdisciplinarity

March 13, 2026August 20, 2024

By Lisa Andrews, Bárbara Willaarts, Andreas Panagopoulos, Radhika Kanade, Nelson Odume, Bodil Ankjær Nielsen and Ingrīda Brēmere.

authors_andrews_willaarts_panagopoulos_kanade_odume_ankjaer — 1. Lisa Andrews; 2. Bárbara Willaarts; 3. Andreas Panagopoulos; 4. Radhika Kanade; 5. Nelson Odume; 6. Bodil Ankjær Nielsen; 7. Ingrīda Brēmere (biographies)

Are there similar challenges, responsibilities, and methods in transdisciplinarity across countries, scales, contexts and actor types?

In exploring five transdisciplinary case studies from projects on the topics of the water-energy-food-environment nexus and climate change adaptation, we identified three main lessons learned. These were common across the cases from South Africa, India, Greece, Latvia and Denmark, despite their different contexts, types of actors and project structures. These lessons were shared in a workshop at the 2024 Sustainability, Research and Innovation (SRI) Congress in Finland.

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).

Decolonising your writing

September 11, 2023May 2, 2023

By kate harriden

kate harriden’s biography

As an Indigenous person, it is draining, infuriating and tedious to consistently encounter recently written academic material that invokes, seemingly uncritically, colonial tropes. Paired with these tropes is usually a mix of arrogance, condescension and ignorance on which notions of ‘western’ superiority are based. I am Totally. Over. It. Not only are these tropes inaccurate and offensive, they allow the colonized researcher to avoid critiquing the impacts of colonization and (un)conscious biases in their work.

If you don’t understand ‘the problem’, chances are you are part of it, so sit down and open your mind as we go through this together. Hopefully the tips provided on how to decolonize your academic writing will start your journey into decolonizing writing.

Learning to recognize colonial writing

Undoubtedly you have read substantially more academic material imbued with colonial values and assumptions than decolonial academic material.

Understanding researcher positionality using the insider-outsider continuum

October 16, 2024December 14, 2021

By Rebecca Laycock Pedersen and Varvara Nikulina

authors_rebecca-laycock-pedersen_varvara-nikulina — 1. Rebecca Laycock Pedersen (biography)
2. Varvara Nikulina (biography)

How can researchers express their positionality? What does positionality mean?

In working at the interface of science and society, researchers play many different roles, even within a single project, as, for example:

bridge builders (as described by Rod Lawrence in his blog post),
policy advisers (as described by Karin Ingold), and
activists (as described by Dorothy Broom).

As researchers, our role within a project is a part of our ‘positionality,’ or our social position. Positionality as defined by Agar (1996) is whether one sees oneself as an outsider, a ‘neutral’ investigator, or something else. Because of the many hats researchers often wear, scrutinising “aspects usually taken for granted and […] [being] aware of the role of a scientist as an intervener” (Fazey et al., 2018, p. 57) is vital.

Participatory research and power

August 11, 2023October 15, 2019

By Diana Rose

Can even the most well-designed participatory research really level the power relations between researchers and the relevant community? The key issues are who sets the research agenda, who drives the research process and governs it, and who interprets information. In all these aspects of research, the aim is for the community to no longer be ‘subjects’ but equal partners.

In this blog post, I outline challenges to achieving this mission, so that we can be realistic about what’s involved in trying to achieve equal partnerships. The difficulties identified are not proposed as tensions to be ‘solved’ but as dilemmas that can be articulated so as better to facilitate good practice, not reach an unattainable perfect state.

In my research on mental health services, my team and I are mental health service users ourselves and are therefore more intrinsically part of the community being researched.

Whose side are we on and for whom do we write?

December 18, 2024February 14, 2017

By Jon Warren and Kayleigh Garthwaite

authors_jon-warren_kayleigh-garthwaite — 1. Jon Warren (biography)
2. Kayleigh Garthwaite (biography)

In 1967 Howard Becker posed the question – to academics – “Whose side are we on?”.

Becker was discussing the question during the time of civil rights, the Vietnam war and widespread social change in the US. He sparked a debate about objectivity and value neutrality which had long featured as part of the social sciences’ methodological foundations and which has implications beyond the social sciences for all academics.

What relevance do these ideas have now, in an era when academics and their research are becoming increasingly commodified? Academics are increasingly pressured by their own institutions and fellow professionals to gain more funding, publish more papers and make more impact. Questions of social justice and professional integrity are at risk of being swamped by these forces allied to unscrupulous careerism.

We argue that the question now is not only who academics serve but also who we write for.

Modeling as social practice

September 5, 2024March 10, 2016

By Jeremy Trombley

Modeling – the creation of simplified or abstract representations of the world – is something that people do in many different ways and for many different reasons, and is a social practice. This is true even in the case of scientific and computational models that don’t meet the specific criteria of “participatory” or “collaborative.” Scientists and modelers interact with one another, share information, critique and help to refine one another’s work, and much more as they build models.

Furthermore, all of these activities take place within broader social structures – universities, government agencies, non-government organizations, or simply community groups – and involve resources – funding sources, technologies – that also have social factors that are both embedded within and emerging from them. Understanding the relationship between all of these social dimensions as well as those of the problems that modeling is being used to address is an important task, particularly in participatory modeling projects.