Day II: Action-oriented research in practice

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Virtual Workshop on 19 March 2021 - Call for presentations

Calls have rapidly grown for new ways of doing research for sustainability transformations. The transdisciplinary turn emphasises the need for actionable knowledge that is co-created with the practitioners.

As co-created solutions are demanded from research to tackle the wicked sustainability problems of our time, questions about how we conduct such research, which research methodologies are the most appropriate for providing co-created transformative knowledge and what problems arise from these entangled forms of research practice need to be addressed. We need to have a critical look on what kind of knowledge action-oriented research can produce and how this knowledge participates in the making of sustainability transformations.

We invite you to share your experiences in conducting action-oriented research and discuss the various approaches together with your colleagues from three different research organisations SYKE, CDE, SPRU.

Transdisciplinary approaches have been much applied in sustainability science and environmental governance. In sustainability transition studies interest in experiments, living labs and other action-oriented methods have also increased rapidly. Action-oriented research has a strong methodological background in pragmatism, but the approaches and methods applied vary a lot between different fields of research and cultural contexts. Further exchange between the different approaches is needed to develop more robust research strategies on the approaches suitable for specific contexts.

In this workshop we wish to boost collaboration and methodological learning amongst the researchers from multiple disciplines and institutes to stimulate learning across different approaches and methods

The workshop consists of two parts. On Day I we hear two keynotes on action-oriented research for sustainability transformations, see programme here. Day II is devoted to methodological insights from research practice. The contributions to Day II provide a basis for the selection of cases for a collaborative article on action research for sustainability transformations.

If you are interested in sharing your experiences in conducting action-oriented research, please register and/or send your abstract (max 250 words) by 28 February 2021.

In preparing your presentation, please consider the questions below. The questions are framed to stimulate reflection between the different approaches to action-oriented research. We welcome insights from different cultural, societal and environmental contexts.

• What kind of action-oriented methods have you used in your research and for which kind of research questions?
• What is the theoretical base of your methodological approach?
• What kind of action-oriented knowledge were you able to produce?
• What problems did you encounter in conducting research together with the practitioners?
• How your approach to action research helped to understand and interpret sustainability transition? On which issues the approach directed your attention to? What was left behind?

Register and/or send your abstract

• Registration has ended.

Upcoming webinars

• 3 & 8 June 2021 – Just transitions, together with the Just food project,  more information coming soon
• Fall 2021 – Theories of Change, more information coming soon

More information

If there are any questions, don't hesitate to contact:

• Minna Kaljonen, Research professor, Finnish Environment Institute SYKE, firstname.lastname@syke.fi, Tel. +358 295 251 252

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This is the first webinar of a webinar series organised to promote reflective and critical discussion on methodologies and new research questions posed by sustainability transformations. The webinar series is collectively organised by Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE, Finland), Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) at the University of Bern (Switzerland) and Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom)