Reflexivity – Integration and Implementation Insights

Participatory countermapping

September 22, 2026September 15, 2026

By Moné Vasquez Ladron de Guevara and Pablo Mansilla Quiñones.

authors_mone-vasquez-ladron-de-guevara_pablo-mansilla-quinones — 1. Moné Vasquez Ladron de Guevara (biography)
2. Pablo Mansilla Quiñones (biography)

How can Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant and peasant communities, as well as others, co-create maps that capture their memories, practices, and territorial knowledge, especially in contexts marked by territorial or environmental conflict, and in histories and geographies shaped by coloniality? How can territorial representations and the spatial organization imposed by extractivist processes that dispossess people of their land be challenged? How can the scientific-technical rationality underlying conventional mapmaking―rationality that often erases multiple, subaltern forms of territoriality and knowledge embedded in these territories―be questioned?

Countermapping can also be considered to be a participatory action research process that supports territorial struggles through the production of maps grounded in local knowledge.

Transdisciplinary learning as U-shaped learning

September 8, 2026

By Gemma O’Sullivan.

What is involved in transdisciplinary learning?

The transdisciplinary learning process can be seen as the development of two capacities: knowledge integration and actionable knowledge (closing the knowledge-action gap).

Integration capacity refers to the ability to integrate knowledge from different disciplines, epistemologies, cultures, communities and individuals across society to collectively achieve a greater understanding of, and solutions for, complex problems.

Actionable knowledge capacity refers to the ability to create knowledge that leads to action.

The two capacities―integration capacity and actionable knowledge capacity―are connected and enabled by a ballast of interpersonal, intrapersonal and cognitive competencies.

Researcher motivations affect equitable collaboration with local and indigenous peoples

September 8, 2026September 1, 2026

By Roxana Roos.

What motivates researchers in choosing to work with local and indigenous communities? How do these motivations shape how much say local and indigenous people actually get in the research that affects them? What do researchers need to do to ensure that collaboration is equitable?

Here, I describe two clusters of motivations.

The first cluster revolves around verbs such as “understand,” “collect,” “study,” and “know.” Researchers in this group are largely driven by personal interest, curiosity, and a professional identity (“I am an anthropologist. It is my job to find out how people live”). Here, the researcher is the active party: they interview, observe, analyze, and publish. The local and indigenous people, on the other hand, play a more passive role; their practices and narratives are studied rather than being part of a partnership.

The essential conditions for, and characteristics of, complexity

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026

By Jean Boulton.

What are the underpinning necessities or conditions—the essential ingredients—that lead to and engender the qualities or characteristics of the complex world, especially its processual and emergent nature?

Three conditions for complexity: the essential ingredients

A watch or intricate machine is not complex. Nor is a saucer of water. So, when do we regard something as complex? What are the necessary conditions for complexity fully to be realised?

These are:

open boundaries
diversity
reflexive inter-relationships among constituents.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

Four tips for developing norms for collaboration agreements

October 28, 2025

By Edgar Cardenas.

edgar-cardenas_2025 — Edgar Cardenas (biography)

Norms are the foundational building blocks for collaboration agreements. Hence, we must consider what’s an effective way for teams to develop the norms underpinning a collaboration agreement? How can teams build on experience and avoid getting bogged down when negotiating norms?

In helping teams to develop norms that enable productive collaborations, I use Richard Hackman’s definition of norms as “shared agreements among members about what behaviors are valued in the group, and what behaviors are not. They refer only to behavior, including things members say, not to unexpressed private thoughts and feelings” (Hackman, 2011, p.103).

In other words, norms that help you collaborate better must be grounded by clearly identifiable behaviors and team members must agree to abide by these norms. When developing a norm, the team then has to ask: “Is the behavior clear enough that team members have a shared understanding of the specific behavior?” and “Do we agree to using this norm?”

Building co-production capabilities in researchers: Strengthening reflexivity via learning opportunities

December 8, 2025August 5, 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)

What forms of learning can support interdisciplinary teams to rapidly build reflexivity capabilities, especially in preparation for doing transdisciplinary (engaged) science with non-researcher societal actors?

Transdisciplinary co-production requires deep and reflexive learning. Reflexivity is a key capability for researchers doing inter- and transdisciplinary science, involving the critical enquiry of existing assumptions, values and norms underlying our decisions and actions, with the aim to adapt or change current practices or discourses.

Such learning is foundational for understanding and proactively engaging with knowledge-power dynamics, including potentially catalysing shifts in incumbent dynamics when preparing to engage with non-societal actors.

Seven quality choice points for contemporary action research

August 12, 2025July 29, 2025

By Hilary Bradbury.

How can action researchers empower system actors in impactfully responding to our deepening eco-social crisis? How can action research be a catalyst to successfully transmute the inexhaustible resource of human creativity in all spaces—self to society—toward addressing our global problems? How can we encourage deepening clarity of choices made to navigate a middle path between responding to problems within living communities and contributing to research-based theory?

Mitigating the worst of our global problems requires action research that draws on many kinds and sources of knowledge. In fact, it requires drawing much more from diverse people on the ground, who understand the problems at hand and can offer solutions anchored in their experience of what is meaningful for them.

The aim of the seven choice points described below is to support action researchers in:

deepening and speeding up the proliferation of good work,
connecting local niche experiments to global reach.

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.

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.

Transdisciplinarity in Africa: Key issues in achieving higher education’s third mission

May 20, 2025

By Basirat Oyalowo.

basirat-oyalowo_2025 — Basirat Oyalowo (biography)

How can transdisciplinarity in Africa help achieve higher education’s third mission, namely making a contribution to society? What are the best pathways for achieving this? What are the key obstructions and potential ways around them?

Higher education’s third mission involves adding to the first two missions of teaching and research towards providing service to society. However, general pathways to achieving this are still unclear. A few studies have explored how and why the local impacts of universities need to be measured, but these are generally from outside Africa and concentrate more on quantitative methods to measure specific impact, such as economic impact.

Transdisciplinarity provides opportunities to consider the diversity of societal needs and values, to benefit from local knowledge, to involve scientific disciplines, stakeholders and target groups.

What roles do you play in inter- and transdisciplinary projects?

April 3, 2025April 1, 2025

By Hanna Salomon, Benjamin Hofmann and Sabine Hoffmann.

authors_salomon_hofman_hoffmann — 1. Hanna Salomon (biography)
2. Benjamin Hofmann (biography)
3. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)

What roles do researchers typically play in inter- and transdisciplinary projects? How can they be made transparent in order to reflect on them?

Inter- and transdisciplinary projects typically require different roles and the researchers involved may play one or more of them. There is a plethora of literature describing various ideal-typical roles and we used the literature on researchers’ roles in sustainability science to develop a reflection tool on researcher roles in inter- and transdisciplinary projects.

A Role Reflection Tool

The reflection tool consists of a role survey for individual researchers, a spider web graph for immediate role visualization on the individual and project team level, and a set of questions for individual and project team reflections.

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.

Understanding exclusion, sharing benefits and building in reflection in transdisciplinary collaborations

January 22, 2026June 25, 2024

By Annisa Triyanti, Corinne Lamain, Jessica Duncan and Jillian Student

authors_triyanti_lamain_duncan_student — 1. Annisa Triyanti (biography)
2. Corinne Lamain (biography)
3. Jessica Duncan (biography)
4. Jillian Student (biography)

How are ways of knowing excluded in transdisciplinary collaborations? How can transdisciplinary collaborations provide fair compensation for all who dedicate time and effort to the collaboration? How can transdisciplinary processes be made more fair, inclusive and equitable by including reflective processes?

Transdisciplinary collaborations aim to bring together different forms of knowledge, for example academic knowledge with knowledge of practitioners, activists, community groups, etc. Important questions to unpack the politics of transdisciplinary collaborations include:

Who decides which societal challenges are addressed?
Who has the most access and power to mobilize actions and resources?
Who decides who will be involved?
Who receives benefits?