Tuesday, 27 September 2016

SUSTAINABILITY AND THE CHALLENGE OF TRANSDISCIPLINARITY

CUSP/CEEDR Seminar w/ Fergus Lyon and Frances Harris
How can science, business, the public sector and civil society work together? This seminar will discuss findings from the joint think piece on knowledge co-production at the food, water, energy, and environment nexus.

Increasingly complex problems that sustainability science is facing require research to draw not only on multiple disciplines but on multiple professions, too. Whether coming from business, public policy or from civil society, each of these groups have different priorities and agendas. Research that aims to bring these together has to find a way of managing the tensions that may arise from the different approaches, methodologies, goals and values.

Drawing on theories of institutional logics, Prof Fergus Lyon and Dr Frances Harris will present their findings on how successful collaborations overcome these tensions at different stages of any research project. This seminar presents the results of a large review of transdisciplinary research in sustainability science and sets out a research agenda and framework for understanding these processes.  

ABOUT

Prof Fergus Lyon is deputy director of CUSP and theme lead for our research into the political and organisational dimensions of sustainable prosperity. Dr Frances Harris is senior lecturer in the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at University of Hertfordshire. Over her career she has worked in Africa and the UK, building bridges between the professions of farming, science and policy.

The seminar is drawing on one of a series of thinkpieces commissioned by the Nexus Network, “to help scope and define nexus approaches and stimulate debate across the linked domains of food, energy, water and the environment.”