Fostering the social utility of events: an integrative framework for the strategic use of events in community development

Although the use of planned events for achieving community development has received academic attention from different disciplines, the findings of these literatures are not systematically used towards developing a common understanding aimed at fostering their social utility. The challenge then is to study from an integrated interdisciplinary perspective how the social value of events can be fostered and leveraged for community development. In addressing this challenge, the purpose of this conceptual paper is to shed light on the multi-layered processes that foster the social utility of events. To this end, the theoretical tenets of social leverage, event dramaturgy and social capital are employed and integrated. On this basis, a conceptual framework linking event processes and outcomes is proposed aimed to guide future interdisciplinary research towards strategically incorporating events in community development. This line of research can eventually help create synergies between different event genres and implement joint social leveraging strategies, hence, fostering and magnifying their overall social utility for host communities

Science vs. science: the complexities of interdisciplinary research

Human-Computer Interaction and Web Science are radically interdisciplinary fields, but what does this mean in practical terms? Undertaking research (and writing papers) that encompass multiple disciplinary perspectives and methods is a serious challenge and it is difficult to maintain conferences that fairly review and host contributions from multiple disciplines. The colocation of the ACM WebSci conference with CHI in Paris, offers an unusual opportunity to bring these two communities together. Previous discussions have considered how to conduct interdisciplinary work that bridges HCI/WebSci with specific areas. Our objective is to provide a space for interested researchers from both communities to share their views and approaches to tackling the tensions and complexities associated with interdisciplinary work, whatever fields are being bridged

The Potential of Positioning: Assessing New Directions for an Integrated, Feminist International Political Economy

Feminist analyses of International Political Economy (IPE) currently face a significant epistemological challenge. By seeking to engage with mainstream political economists, feminist IPE scholars have narrowed the interdisciplinary approach that is common in most contemporary feminist scholarship to instead focus almost exclusively on the effects of neoliberal globalization. However, this focus has proved unsuccessful in garnering the interest of most mainstream international political economists and has isolated these scholars from feminist research in other disciplines. This paper argues that feminist IPE could gain significant leverage within its field by employing an interdisciplinary approach that links broader feminist issue such as violence against women to political economy. This is examined by reviewing some of the major feminist works in IPE and assessing their reception within the field of IPE. Next, the potential for broader feminist issues to garner mainstream attention in IPE is assessed by evaluating the economic implications of violence against women. In altering their epistemology to include a broader feminist analysis, feminist IPE scholars can effectively illustrate the need for feminist analysis in IPE while also wedding their research to the rich, interdisciplinary research of feminists in other fields

Building Interdisciplinary Research Capacity: a Key Challenge for Ecological Approaches in Public Health

The shortcomings of public health research informed by reductionist and fragmented biomedical approaches and the emergence of wicked problems are fueling a renewed interest in ecological approaches in public health. Despite the central role of interdisciplinarity in the context of ecological approaches in public health research, inadequate attention has been given to the specific challenge of doing interdisciplinary research in practice. As a result, important knowledge gaps exist with regards to the practice of interdisciplinary research. We argue that explicit attention towards the challenge of doing interdisciplinary research is critical in order to effectively apply ecological approaches to public health issues. This paper draws on our experiences developing and conducting an interdisciplinary research project exploring the links among climate change, water, and health to highlight five specific insights which we see as relevant to building capacity for interdisciplinary research specifically, and which have particular relevance to addressing the integrative challenges demanded by ecological approaches to address public health issues. These lessons include: (i) the need for frameworks that facilitate integration; (ii) emphasize learning-by-doing; (iii) the benefits of examining issues at multiple scales; (iv) make the implicit, explicit; and (v) the need for reflective practice. By synthesizing and sharing experiences gained by engaging in interdisciplinary inquiries using an ecological approach, this paper responds to a growing need to build interdisciplinary research capacity as a means for advancing the ecological public health agenda more broadly.Peer reviewedinterdisciplinary researchinterdisciplinarityecologicalpublic healt

Diagramming social practice theory:An interdisciplinary experiment exploring practices as networks

Achieving a transition to a low-carbon energy system is now widely recognised as a key challenge facing humanity. To date, the vast majority of research addressing this challenge has been conducted within the disciplines of science, engineering and economics utilising quantitative and modelling techniques. However, there is growing awareness that meeting energy challenges requires fundamentally socio-technical solutions and that the social sciences have an important role to play. This is an interdisciplinary challenge but, to date, there remain very few explorations of, or reflections on, interdisciplinary energy research in practice. This paper seeks to change that by reporting on an interdisciplinary experiment to build new models of energy demand on the basis of cutting-edge social science understandings. The process encouraged the social scientists to communicate their ideas more simply, whilst allowing engineers to think critically about the embedded assumptions in their models in relation to society and social change. To do this, the paper uses a particular set of theoretical approaches to energy use behaviour known collectively as social practice theory (SPT) - and explores the potential of more quantitative forms of network analysis to provide a formal framework by means of which to diagram and visualize practices. The aim of this is to gain insight into the relationships between the elements of a practice, so increasing the ultimate understanding of how practices operate. Graphs of practice networks are populated based on new empirical data drawn from a survey of different types (or variants) of laundry practice. The resulting practice networks are analysed to reveal characteristics of elements and variants of practice, such as which elements could be considered core to the practice, or how elements between variants overlap, or can be shared. This promises insights into energy intensity, flexibility and the rootedness of practices (i.e. how entrenched/ established they are) and so opens up new questions and possibilities for intervention. The novelty of this approach is that it allows practice data to be represented graphically using a quantitative format without being overly reductive. Its usefulness is that it is readily applied to large datasets, provides the capacity to interpret social practices in new ways, and serves to open up potential links with energy modeling. More broadly, a significant dimension of novelty has been the interdisciplinary approach, radically different to that normally seen in energy research. This paper is relevant to a broad audience of social scientists and engineers interested in integrating social practices with energy engineering

Building governance and energy efficiency: Mapping the interdisciplinary challenge

Improving the energy efficiency of multi-owned properties (MoPs)—commonly known as apartment or condominium buildings—is central to the achievement of European energy targets. However, little work to date has focused on how to facilitate retrofit in this context. Drawing on interdisciplinary Social Sciences and Humanities expertise in academia, policy and practice, this chapter posits that decision-making processes within MoPs might provide a key to the retrofit challenge. Existing theories or models of decision-making, applied in the MoP context, might help to explain how collective retrofit decisions are taken—or overlooked. Insights from case studies and practitioners are also key. Theories of change might then be employed to develop strategies to facilitate positive retrofit decisions. The chapter maps the issues and sets an agenda for further interdisciplinary research in this novel area

Killer Apps: Developing Novel Applications That Enhance Team Coordination, Communication, and Effectiveness

As part of the Lorentz workshop, “Interdisciplinary Insights into Group and Team Dynamics,” held in Leiden, Netherlands, this article describes how Geeks and Groupies (computer and social scientists) may benefit from interdisciplinary collaboration toward the development of killer apps in team contexts that are meaningful and challenging for both. First, we discuss interaction processes during team meetings as a research topic for both Groupies and Geeks. Second, we highlight teamwork in health care settings as an interdisciplinary research challenge. Third, we discuss how an automated solution for optimal team design could benefit team effectiveness and feed into team-based interventions. Fourth, we discuss team collaboration in massive open online courses as a challenge for both Geeks and Groupies. We argue for the necessary integration of social and computational research insights and approaches. In the hope of inspiring future interdisciplinary collaborations, we develop criteria for evaluating killer apps—including the four proposed here—and discuss future research challenges and opportunities that potentially derive from these developments

Second-order science of interdisciplinary research: A polyocular framework for wicked problems.

Context: The problems that are most in need of interdisciplinary collaboration are “wicked problems,” such as food crises, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development, with many relevant aspects, disagreement on what the problem is, and contradicting solutions. Such complex problems both require and challenge interdisciplinarity. Problem: The conventional methods of interdisciplinary research fall short in the case of wicked problems because they remain first-order science. Our aim is to present workable methods and research designs for doing second-order science in domains where there are many different scientific knowledges on any complex problem. Method: We synthesize and elaborate a framework for second-order science in interdisciplinary research based on a number of earlier publications, experiences from large interdisciplinary research projects, and a perspectivist theory of science. Results: The second-order polyocular framework for interdisciplinary research is characterized by five principles. Second-order science of interdisciplinary research must: 1. draw on the observations of first-order perspectives, 2. address a shared dynamical object, 3. establish a shared problem, 4. rely on first-order perspectives to see themselves as perspectives, and 5. be based on other rules than first-order research. Implications: The perspectivist insights of second-order science provide a new way of understanding interdisciplinary research that leads to new polyocular methods and research designs. It also points to more reflexive ways of dealing with scientific expertise in democratic processes. The main challenge is that this is a paradigmatic shift, which demands that the involved disciplines, at least to some degree, subscribe to a perspectivist view. Constructivist content: Our perspectivist approach to science is based on the second-order cybernetics and systems theories of von Foerster, Maruyama, Maturana & Varela, and Luhmann, coupled with embodied theories of cognition and semiotics as a general theory of meaning from von Uexküll and Peirce

Innovation in the Federal Public Service

This report uses a case study to suggest a new research framework that will challenge existing perceptions about the nature of innovation in the government “enterprise” and lead to further interdisciplinary lines of research

Innovations in Opioid Law and Policy Interventions Workshop: Summary of Proceedings

In 2017, Indiana University, in cooperation with Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and community partners, launched the Grand Challenge: Responding to the Addictions Crisis initiative, a university-wide effort to advance interdisciplinary research and interventions in response to the substance abuse crisis affecting Indiana and the nation. The “Legal and Policy Best Practices in Response to the Substance Abuse Crisis” project is one of sixteen funded under Phase 1 of the Grand Challenge. In July 2018, and as part of this project, the research team convened a group of national experts to discuss legal and policy innovations to respond to the opioid use disorder (OUD) crisis. This report summarizes the proceedings of this workshop and updates some of the recommendations made by the team in their March 2018 Preliminary Report. During the workshop, experts answered targeted questions relating to the challenges in implementing law and policy recommendations to respond to the addiction crisis, as well as identified gaps in the current research. Participants provided examples of innovative interventions to respond to this crisis across four primary topic categories: (1) Criminalization; (2) Public Health; (3) Treatment; and (4) Effectuating Change