The Challenges of Transdisciplinary Knowledge Production // From Unilocal to Comparative Research
By David Simon, Henrietta Palmer, Jan Riise, Warren Smit and Sandra Valencia. This reflective paper surveys the lessons learnt and challenges faced by the Mistra Urban Futures (MUF) research centre and its research platforms in Sweden, the UK, South Africa and Kenya in developing and deploying different forms of transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge. Considerable experience with a distinctive portfolio of such methods has been gained and reflective evaluation is now under way. While it is important to understand the local context within which each method has evolved, the authors seek to explain the potential for adaptation in diverse contexts so that such knowledge co-production methods can be more widely utilized. Transdisciplinary co-production is inherently complex, time consuming and often unpredictable in terms of outcomes, and these challenges are intensified when it is undertaken comparatively.
The paper presents key lessons based on experiences of the Mistra Urban Futures projects within the field of engagement in transdisciplinary and collaborative processes. A typology of forms or models of comparison was developed, representing a spectrum in terms of the degree of central versus local (bottom-up) design, implementation and control.
The overarching objective of MUFs approach to transdisciplinary comparative research is to analyse how key themes relating to urban sustainability and justice are understood and operationalized in different contexts, thus helping to open up more possibilities for change. The ultimate objective is to ensure the realization of just and sustainable cities in these different contexts (e.g. by learning from the positive and negative experiences of other cities, and developing trans-local links).
Key achievements, constraints and generalizable principles based on the experience in the respective Local Interaction Platforms (LIPs) during the first phase of Mistra Urban Futures are:
- A prerequisite for success is being locally appropriate and embedded, so as to be, and be seen to be, responsive to local conditions and flexible in adapting to evolving agendas.
- Local Interaction Platforms as “active intermediaries” between global agendas and local contexts and concerns. This bidirectional role and relationship adds considerable value both ways. On the one hand, the individual cities have been able to understand and learn from experiences elsewhere and from global initiatives on urban sustainability in tackling similar problems.
- Partners need to operate through thorough reflexivity, with openness to change and renewal
- Much depends on who the individual researchers are. It is essential to identify and recruit researchers who can straddle disciplines and bridge the divide between academia and policy/practice, since these are extremely difficult challenges and not everybody has the right skills, experience and personality. A related lesson is that different stakeholders often have diverse perspectives and conflicting agendas. People involved in transdisciplinary research need good facilitation skills (or need to be able to draw on people with good facilitation skills) as they attempt to reconcile these perspectives.
- Through exposing practitioners to a range of new perspectives, new “communities of knowledge and practice” have been created, with changes in the mindsets and actions of many practitioners
- There is no one right way of approaching the transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge. The method that works best can vary considerably from topic to topic and from place to place, depending on who the stakeholders are, how contested that particular issue is, and what the existing body of knowledge on that particular topic in that particular place is. The only commonality in the various transdisciplinary co-production processes was that they all involved extensive engagement over a sustained period of time with a range of stakeholders (especially city officials, academic researchers and civil society) to attempt to better understand and address the real challenges facing the city.
Transdisciplinary, comparative research calls for a different approach, focusing on understanding the different perspectives and methodologies in different contexts, and making those understandings a core of the research process and outputs. The paper suggests five distinct but overlapping categories of challenge and opportunity, comprising combinations of internal and external elements:
- Project narratives: While the different projects in the participating LIPs match each other thematically, their empirical foci often differ and they might have different origins
- Time: Time constraints increase in complexity and extent when many partners are involved in one location, and even more for international comparative research. Academic, public-sector, civil society (NGO) and private-sector partners operate with different calendars, budget cycles, time pressures and degrees of flexibility over their timetables. In a North–South comparative context, differences in annual calendars, workloads, the adequacy of salary levels, facilities and infrastructure, performance and assessment criteria can prove challenging both for the same kinds of stakeholders and across stakeholder groups
- Funding: Different funding sources have different durations, stipulations about the extent of paid employment required or permitted, and demands on results.
- Culture and power: Cultures of decision making (hierarchies, traditions, gender relations, levels of formal educational attainment, attitudes to age differences and the like) and communication (formal and interpersonal communication, different forms of knowledge, methods of interpretation and ways of knowing, the ability and willingness to have a voice in research team discussions) differ considerably across and within countries and regions.
- Governance: The outputs and outcomes of transdisciplinary comparative work are subject to expectations of different kinds, based not only on the actual setups of the respective projects themselves but also on the relevant governance structures of the participating organizations and institutions in each LIP.
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Published
October 2018
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Established in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2010, MUF is an international urban research centre (“the Centre” in this paper) promoting urban sustainability by means of the transdisciplinary coproduction of knowledge, undertaken in a series of Local Interaction. These have been formed through bottom-up local initiatives that lead to formal partnerships among groups of academic and practice-oriented institutions in Gothenburg (Sweden), Sheffield/ Greater Manchester (UK), Cape Town (South Africa), and Kisumu (Kenya). These partnerships came together to form what became Mistra Urban Futures.
In
Environment and Urbanization, 30(2), 481–500.