Conflicting roles of researchers in sustainability transitions: balancing action and reflection

Bulten, Ellen; Hessels, Laurens K.; Hordijk, Michaela; Segrave, Andrew

doi:10.1007/s11625-021-00938-7

Cited by 41 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 58 publications

(108 reference statements)

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“…These sometimes conflicting views and expectations may influence the resources and skills needed in a project (Bulten et al, 2021) or the research outcomes (Thompson et al, 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Transdisciplinary research in natural resources management: Towards an integrative and transformative use of co‐concepts

Hakkarainen

Mäkinen‐Rostedt

D'amato

et al. 2021

Sustainable Development

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Transdisciplinary research often utilizes collaborative ways of knowledge production to enable deliberate transformations towards sustainability. Multiple concepts with varying definitions are applied, leading to confusion in the aims and uses of these concepts. In this article, we review five concepts relevant to the current debate on the new collaborative ways of knowledge production in transdisciplinary research. We focus on the concepts of co‐creation, co‐production, co‐design, co‐learning, and adaptive co‐management in the context of natural resources management (NRM). This study couples a literature review and a conceptual analysis, and aims to clarify definitions, use, the interlinkages of these concepts and to shed light on their intertwined nature. We propose an integrative understanding of the concepts to facilitate collaborative modes and to enable the transformative aims of research processes. To this end, we discuss how to harvest the transformative potential of the “co‐concepts” by focusing on reflexivity, power analysis and process orientation.

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“…These sometimes conflicting views and expectations may influence the resources and skills needed in a project (Bulten et al, 2021) or the research outcomes (Thompson et al, 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Transdisciplinary research in natural resources management: Towards an integrative and transformative use of co‐concepts

Hakkarainen

Mäkinen‐Rostedt

D'amato

et al. 2021

Sustainable Development

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“…For example, in 2020 the oil and gas sector spent over $136 million in political contributions and $110 million on lobbying in just one country, the United States (OpenSecrets.org, 2021). Governments are also influenced by public opinion; however, special interests also seek to forestall popular demand for sustainability transitions through the funding of climate change counter-movement organisations to manipulate public opinion by casting doubt on the realities of climate science or the urgency of transformative action (Lamb et al, 2020;Brulle et al, 2021).…”

Section: From Publications To Public Actionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Publications to Public Actions: The Role of Universities in Facilitating Academic Advocacy and Activism in the Climate and Ecological Emergency

Gardner¹,

Thierry²,

Rowlandson³

et al. 2021

Front. Sustain.

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Thousands of universities have made climate emergency declarations; however the higher education sector is not rising to the collective challenge with the urgency commensurate with scientific warnings. Universities are promoting an increased focus on sustainability through their research, teaching and their own institutional footprints. However, we suggest that such initiatives will be insufficient to catalyse the required transformations in our societies and economies because of (i) the time lags inherent in education and research pathways to impact, and (ii) their failure to address either real-world political processes or the forces invested in maintaining the status quo. We therefore suggest that academics should move from publications to public actions and engage in advocacy and activism to affect urgent and transformational change. We discuss the barriers to engagement in advocacy that academics face, and propose a number of actions that universities should adopt to help overcome them. These include explicitly recognising advocacy as part of the work mandate of academic staff by altering work allocation models, facilitating engaged research sabbaticals, altering hiring and promotion policies, and providing training to enhance the effectiveness of engagement. In addition, universities must defend the right of academics to engage in protest and push back against emerging threats to academic freedom. Such actions would strengthen a rich tradition of academic protest and enhance the contribution of universities to the public good in areas well beyond sustainability, for example race and social justice (Black Lives Matter, decolonising education) and public health.

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“…Finally, though we were not directly involved in 'doing inclusion' in the Labs, we are aware that in each of our roles (researchers, training team and project management) we were not neutral observers, but actively engaged in those contexts FIT4FOOD2030 aimed to transform. The powerful role of researchers in (agenda-setting and) shaping practice has been well documented (see, e.g., Shdaimah and Stahl 2012) and in the project, we balanced multiple sometimes conflicting roles (see Bulten et al 2021). In fact, we were performing our own (political) balancing act: navigating between on the hand the pre-set project ambitions and targets as well as directions implied by the EU policy context and funders, and on the other hand the emergent and diverse needs of the different Labs.…”

Section: Discussion and Reflections: Navigating The Politics Of Transformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unraveling the politics of ‘doing inclusion’ in transdisciplinarity for sustainable transformation

et al. 2021

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Transdisciplinary research and innovation (R&I) efforts have emerged as a means to address challenges to sustainable transformation. One of the main elements of transdisciplinary efforts is the ‘inclusion’ of different stakeholders, values and perspectives in participatory R&I processes. In practice, however, ‘doing inclusion’ raises a number of challenges. In this article, we aim to contribute to re-politicizing inclusion in transdisciplinarity for transformation, by (1) empirically unraveling four key challenges that emerge in the political practice of ‘doing inclusion’, (2) illustrating how facilitators of inclusion processes perform balancing acts when confronted with these challenges, and (3) reflecting on what the unfolding dynamics suggests about the politics of stakeholder inclusion for societal transformation. In doing so, we analyze the transdisciplinary FIT4FOOD2030 project (2017–2020)—an EU-funded project that aimed to contribute to fostering EU R&I systems’ ability to catalyze food system transformation through stakeholder engagement in 25 Living Labs. Based on 3 years of action-research (including interviews, workshops and field observations), we identified four inherent political challenges to ‘doing inclusion’ in FIT4FOOD2030: (1) the challenge to meaningfully bring together powerful and marginalized stakeholders; (2) combining representation and deliberation of different stakeholder groups; (3) balancing diversities of inclusion with directionalities implied by transformative efforts; and (4) navigating the complexities of establishing boundaries of inclusion processes. We argue that by understanding ‘doing inclusion’ as a political practice, necessitating specificity about the (normative) ambitions in different inclusion settings, facilitators may better grasp and address challenges in transdisciplinarity for transformation.

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Conflicting roles of researchers in sustainability transitions: balancing action and reflection

Cited by 41 publications

References 58 publications

Transdisciplinary research in natural resources management: Towards an integrative and transformative use of co‐concepts

Transdisciplinary research in natural resources management: Towards an integrative and transformative use of co‐concepts

From Publications to Public Actions: The Role of Universities in Facilitating Academic Advocacy and Activism in the Climate and Ecological Emergency

Unraveling the politics of ‘doing inclusion’ in transdisciplinarity for sustainable transformation

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