First i2S Conference: Other Outcomes

Other noteworthy outcomes from the First Global Conference on Research Integration and Implementation (First I2S Conference, for short) are:

  • the evaluation reports
  • the post-conference workshop and various collaborations
  • a funding opportunity.

Various social events from the conference are documented in photographs.

 

The evaluation reports

The evaluation was conducted using SurveyMonkey between 25 September and 31 October 2013. Registrants were sent the original invitation on 25 September and reminders on 10 and 22 October.

 

The post-conference workshop and collaborations

The invited plenary speakers who were in Canberra convened for a two day workshop after the conference, which involved more intense discussions about similarities and differences in their approaches and charting ways forward (pictures from the post-conference workshop). The workshop also included video-conference discussions with many of the other invited plenary speakers in Europe and the Americas.

Most of the invited plenary speakers collaborated on a paper "Improving research and action on complex social and environmental problems by developing a knowledge bank of research integration and implementation practices", which is currently in the publication process.

A range of new links between the invited speakers were made, resulting in publications, activities and visits, including:

  • Hilary Bradbury invited Gerald Midgley, Michael O’Rourke and colleagues and Gabriele Bammer to contribute chapters to the third edition of the SAGE Handbook of Action Research.
  • Linda Neuhauser and Christian Pohl collaborated on a chapter entitled ‘Integrating Transdisciplinarity and Translational Concepts and Methods into Graduate Education’ published in Paul Gibbs (editor) Transdisciplinary Professional Learning and Practice, Springer 2015.
  • Deborah O’Connell was invited by John Young to contribute a blog on evaluating sustainability to the Better Evaluation website http://www.betterevaluation.org/blog/evaluating_sustainability
  • Bianca Vienni participated in the 2014 td Summer School, Transdisciplinary Research at the Science/Society Interface at Leuphana University Lueneburg in which Ulli Vilsmaier teaches.

Some existing links were strengthened, including:

  • Lynn Crawford visited Gerald Midgley’s group in Hull in October 2013 and gave a presentation on projects as complex systems.
  • Christian Pohl organised a session on Tools to support transdisciplinary research for the 2015 td-Net conference in Basel Switerland to be chaired by Julie Thompson Klein, with contributors including himself and Gabriele Bammer, as well as conference participants Kara Hall, Catherine Lyall and Rick Szostak.

 

A funding opportunity

In late December 2014, SESYNC (the US National Science Foundation-funded National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center) in Annapolis, Maryland USA issued a funding call "Building resources for action-oriented team science through syntheses of practices and theories". The stimulus was a draft of the paper "Improving research and action on complex social and environmental problems by developing a knowledge bank of research integration and implementation practices", which had been sent to David Hawthorne from SESYNC for review as a critical friend.

 

Social events

There were a number of social events, especially for the plenary speakers, which are documented photographically: