{"id":1052,"date":"2020-05-06T15:16:33","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T15:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bioleft.org\/en\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2022-04-19T17:18:58","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T17:18:58","slug":"red","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bioleft.org\/en\/2020\/05\/06\/red\/","title":{"rendered":"A transformative knowledge network"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was published under the title “Structured Collaboration Across a Transformative Knowledge Network-Learning Across Disciplines, Cultures and Contexts?”. It belongs to the special issue Collaboration for Sustainability, published in Sustainability 2020, 12(6), 2499; https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/su12062499<\/a>. It was co-written by 25 researchers from twelve institutions in eight countries, members of the Pathways to Sustainability network. Among them, the three founders of Bioleft, which was born as part of this network. Here, the global sharing of these social experiences towards transformation. The original can be read here.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Abstract<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
Realising the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require transformative changes at micro, meso and macro levels and across diverse geographies. Collaborative, transdisciplinary research has a role to play in documenting, understanding and contributing to such transformations. Previous work has investigated the role of this research in Europe and North America, however the dynamics of transdisciplinary research on \u2018transformations to sustainability\u2019 in other parts of the world are less well-understood. This paper reports on an international project that involved transdisciplinary research in six different hubs across the globe and was strategically designed to enable mutual learning and exchange. It draws on surveys, reports and research outputs to analyse the processes of transdisciplinary collaboration for sustainability that took place between 2015\u20132019. The paper illustrates how the project was structured in order to enable learning across disciplines, cultures and contexts and describes how it also provided for the negotiation of epistemological frameworks and different normative commitments between members across the network. To this end, it discusses lessons regarding the use of theoretical and methodological anchors, multi-loop learning and evaluating emergent change (including the difficulties encountered). It offers insights for the design and implementation of future international transdisciplinary collaborations that address locally-specific sustainability challenges within the universal framework of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.<\/div>\n
Keywords: <\/em> pathways<\/a>; transdisciplinary research<\/a>; international collaboration<\/a>; sustainable development goals<\/a>; theory of change<\/a>; transformation<\/a>; sustainable development goals<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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1. Introduction and Background<\/h2>\n
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which grew out of the Rio+20 UN Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 2012 and were agreed at the UN General Assembly in 2015, represent the most ambitious and internationally-recognised agenda for sustainability that the world has seen. In comparison to their forerunners the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the global goals are \u2018universal\u2019 in that they apply to all countries. Their pledge to \u201cleave no-one behind\u201d [1<\/a>] requires attention to the most marginalised communities and points to the need to address power and structural inequalities.<\/div>\n
In contrast to the \u2018universal\u2019 nature of the 17 goals and 169 targets agreed in New York in 2015 lie the radically different contexts\u2014at national and subnational levels\u2014in which these ambitions are to be realised. There is a clear need for collaborative research that addresses the challenge of translating global goals to local action and a further need for the international community to learn from these processes of collaboration.<\/div>\n
Networked transdisciplinary research bringing together scholars from different disciplines and non-academic partners is increasingly looked to as a response to this \u201c2030 Agenda\u201d around partnerships for the goals [2<\/a>], with national governments dedicating resources to international collaborative programmes of this type (e.g., through platforms such as \u2018Future Earth\u2019 [3<\/a>]). And yet the majority of transdisciplinary research and its explicit theorisation, has taken place in a limited set of (primarily advanced economy) contexts. If it is to respond to a universal agenda, transdisciplinary research will need to involve types of collaboration that play out differently within localities that possess their own specific histories, cultures and dynamics. A better understanding of how to develop modes of collaboration that respect and take advantage of differences across contexts can inform future networked, transdisciplinary research efforts for sustainability.<\/div>\n
The \u2018Pathways\u2019 Transformative Knowledge Network (TKN) is an international group of research organisations, collaborating to explore processes of social transformation and to share insights. Between 2015\u20132019, the TKN explored different approaches to transdisciplinary research\u2014experimenting, documenting and comparing across the hubs in the network with the objective of \u201clearning across disciplines, cultures and contexts\u201d [4<\/a>]. The project is one of the three initial transformative knowledge networks funded under the Future Earth \u2018Transformations to Sustainability\u2019 programme.<\/div>\n
This paper provides an initial analysis of the project activities, experiences and insights, drawing from the different contexts of implementation. In particular, it discusses the structure and design of the project and the elements that enabled (or constrained) collaboration and learning across the network\u2019s six hubs (in Mexico, Argentina, Kenya, India, China and the United Kingdom (UK)) each with their own disciplinary traditions and histories of engaged research. The paper argues that the project benefited from the use of theoretical and methodological anchors that provided a shared language for the negotiation of different epistemological frameworks and normative commitments. It further identifies some of the challenges to this cross-learning process, including the flexibility required to accommodate very different approaches and the limits to comparative analysis.<\/div>\n
The analysis is instructive for future collaborative, networked social science projects that aim to contribute to the analysis and enactment of social transformations to sustainability.<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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2. Transdisciplinary Research and Transformations to Sustainability<\/h2>\n
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2.1. Insights from the Literature<\/h4>\n
Working across more than one scientific discipline in parallel (multidisciplinarity) and in combination (interdisciplinarity) has long been recognised as a feature of problem-oriented research [5<\/a>], in particular applied to the challenges of sustainability [6<\/a>]. All of the regions hosting hubs of the \u2018Pathways\u2019 TKN have their own histories of transdisciplinary research\u2014the production of knowledge and action through collaborations between research and non-research communities. However, the explicit adoption of the terminology of \u201ctransdisciplinary\u201d research by the sustainability transformations community has been relatively recent [7<\/a>,8<\/a>,9<\/a>,10<\/a>].<\/div>\n
Considering transdisciplinary research as a component of sustainability science, Brandt et al. [11<\/a>] investigate the process phases, knowledge types and the intensity of involvement of practitioners displayed by 236 peer-reviewed transdisciplinary papers. Drawing on earlier work, they argue that there are three process phases of transdisciplinary research: 1) problem identification, 2) problem analysis and 3) integration and application; and that there are three knowledge types that must be integrated in such research: system knowledge, target knowledge and transformation knowledge. The findings of their review are presented in relation to five pre-identified challenges in Table 1<\/a> below. Brandt et al. [11<\/a>] illustrated that transdisciplinary research was increasingly being referred to as an approach to sustainability challenges, however terminology was yet to stabilize and there were clearly limitations in the applicability of \u201cconcepts such as process phases and knowledge types\u201d if practitioners and scientists seeking to engage in concrete transdisciplinary research could not understand them. Conceptual papers were found to be abundant in transdisciplinary work but (as mentioned also in more recent work\u2014see Reference [12<\/a>]) there remains terminological ambiguity and the development of concepts\/typologies is perhaps outpacing their application in practical empirical transdisciplinary research. In terms of methods, the review found that these differed with the ontological approach of the researchers and thus\u2014in opposition to calls for a \u201creproducible and transparent methodological framework for transdisciplinary research\u201d\u2014the researchers argued that \u201cseemingly objective selection of methods can be expected to be unavoidably subjectively biased.\u201d This can be expected to be especially true when methods are applied across different contexts in response to different challenges. Finally, the authors found that generating transdisciplinary research with high-scientific impact remains challenging\u2014a point to which we return in the conclusion.<\/div>\n
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Table 1.<\/b> Challenges of transdisciplinary research in sustainability science (derived from review by Reference [11<\/a>]).<\/div>\n
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\"Table\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The changing nature of inter\/cross\/transdisciplinary work and an appreciation of the key contours of debate in the field, has continued to develop over the past decade [12<\/a>]. Other work, whilst not using the \u201ctransdisciplinary\u201d moniker has described interactions between researchers and other societal groups. Along with \u2018co-design\u2019 and \u2018co-dissemination,\u2019 the term \u201cco-production,\u201d for example, has assumed an important role in recent research in transformations to sustainability [10<\/a>,13<\/a>]). Miller and Wyborn [14<\/a>] review the history and theory around co-production from a broad set of disciplines and fields (including public and business administration, science and technology studies and sustainability science), arguing that some convergence is visible across traditions but that some contemporary approaches [15<\/a>] neglect the political insights of earlier conceptions (such as those of [16<\/a>] or [17<\/a>]). They argue that co-production practices should recognize and value both process and outcomes and that researchers should:<\/div>\n
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