Welcome Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research International - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Sida Science Days

20-22 May 2019

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Welcome Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research

International Science Council www.council.science

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Sida Science Days

20-22 May 2019

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Learning from and about coordinating transdisciplinary research: The Transformations to Sustainability programme

Sarah Moore

T-Learning Change Lab workshop, Zimbabwe, 2016

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PROGRAMME AIMS

• To inform the development of more effective, durable

and equitable solutions to the problems of environmental change and sustainability;

• To promote the use of the best available knowledge

about social transformations by researchers, educators, policy makers, practitioners, the private sector and citizens.

ISSC Report: Hackmann and Lera St. Clair, 2012

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PROGRAMME PRINCIPLES

• The human and social in the causes of and possible solutions to environmental change and

degradation → social science framing and leadership

• The complexity of the environmental challenges → integrated, inter-disciplinary research
• The need for relevant and usable knowledge → problem

and solution-oriented research

• The need to close the implementation gap → engaged,

co-designed and co-produced research

• The global, interconnected and often inequitable

nature of problems → transnational, comparative, North–South collaboration

• The need for more capability to do research of

this type → capacity building Focus on:

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WHAT WE DO

• Supporting research projects on

transformations to sustainability:

• 38 seed grants (2014–2015)
• 3 Transformative Knowledge Networks

(2016–2018)

• 12 collaborative research projects (2018-

2021)

• Fostering knowledge exchange and building a

research community around transformations to sustainability.

• Establishing an open resource base on

transformations to sustainability for the academic and practitioner community

Photo credit: Andres Liévano García

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3 TRANSFORMATIVE KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS, 2016-2019

Academic-Activist Co-produced Knowledge for Environmental Justice Transformative pathways to sustainability: learning across disciplines, contexts and cultures Transgressive social learning for social-ecological sustainability in times of climate change

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12 BELMONT FORUM–NORFACE PROJECTS, 2018-2021

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WHAT ARE WE LEARNING ABOUT ENABLING TD?

• The researchers involved in TD research for sustainability

are typically highly engaged – ‘activist academics’

• Genuine co-design and co-production takes time… the

projects themselves have been ‘a very long beginning’

• Co-design period is critical:
• Co-design already generates knowledge
• Co-design serves as instrument of transformation
• Proactive facilitation of knowledge exchange, networking

and learning is invaluable (and challenging)

• Challenge to systematically monitor and evaluate the

impacts of TD research across the wide spectrum of cases, and of the programme itself, in the long term

• Issues of the ‘sustainability’ of the initiatives and

partnerships

• A key outcome is the building of capacity to do TD research
• TD research requires flexibility, attentiveness and care from

funders

Special issue of COSUST, 2016, based on co-design during seed grants

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Sida Science Days

20-22 May 2019

www.transformationstosustainability.org transformations@council.science