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Workshop: Maps, Measures and Narratives for Transdisciplinary ‘Grand Challenge’ Research
Tuesday 1st May 2018
UCL Institute for Global Prosperity, London
This full-day workshop will consider the capacity of research communities, such as but not limited to those supported
by The Nexus Network, to deliver inter- and transdisciplinary research. The workshop offers an opportunity for those
engaged in such research to explore and pilot innovative methods for evaluating their own researcher capabilities, and the capacities of their research networks.
About the workshop
Inter- and transdisciplinary research practices are often explicitly encouraged by funders seeking to steer research
towards addressing ‘grand challenges’. Strategies employed by funding agencies, such as SDGs, Horizon2020;
Belmont Forum, GCRF and NSF Grand Challenges, often include efforts to increase and enhance the interdisciplinary
research capacity of research organisations, as well as the individual and collective interdisciplinary capabilities of
their researchers.
Acknowledging such incentives and strategies of funding bodies, this workshop will draw attention to the nature of the
relationships developed from research orientated towards ‘global challenges’ and assess the attendant changes to both the capacity of research communities and the capabilities of individual and collective researchers to engage in these
relationships productively.
Our approach
Participants in this workshop will pilot a mixed-methods evaluation framework, developed and tested by researchers based at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex, to assess their own research projects.
This evaluative framework allows researchers to understand how the diversity of their collaborative transdisciplinary
interactions has changed during the course of their project, and to measure and compare these changes for the
organisational benefit of future research.
The workshop will be useful for researchers and funders across a wide variety of disciplinary domains who either
currently are or previously have been engaged in transdisciplinary research related to ‘grand challenges’, such as nexus thinking, projects in pursuit of achieving Sustainable Development Goals or other societal challenges.
Thank you.
