Co-producing Future Earth: ambiguity and experimentation in the governance of global environmental change research

The aim of this thesis is to investigate efforts to transform global environmental change research through co-design and co-production (involving non-academic actors in research governance and conduct). Social scientific work to date on this topic has largely taken an evaluative perspective, outlining challenges of and guidelines for co-production on the ground. By contrast, there is little work on how co-production is conceptualised and put into practice through (international) research governance. Yet institutions aiming to govern research are significant arbiters of meaning and power; their efforts to change research are worthy of investigation. The thesis is based on a qualitative case study of Future Earth, a major international research initiative on global environmental change (GEC) and sustainability. Future Earth is unique in its ambition to internationally coordinate and co-design/co-produce new GEC/sustainability research at a global scale. The study is grounded in co-productionist, interpretive science and technology studies, drawing on ideas about political imaginaries of science and experimental approaches to engagement. It is based on thematic analysis of data from documents, interviews, focus groups and observation of Future Earth’s emergence and development between 2010 and 2015. The analysis suggests that visions of Future Earth were ambitious, diverse and sometimes ambiguous, evoking two potential institutional forms: a unified, cohesive ‘flagship’, or a ‘rich tapestry’ of varied initiatives. Ambiguity persisted in how co-production and related concepts were understood, with varying definitions motivated by different rationales for increased (or limited) involvement of non-academic stakeholders, from ensuring relevance to democratising expertise to preserving the objectivity or independence of science. These notions of appropriate engagement were underpinned by disparate conceptions of the value of research (as a service to society, site of democratic deliberation, or public good), reproducing (and challenging) established models of science and democracy. The thesis argues that, from an experimental perspective, this ambiguity in visions of (co-production in) Future Earth can be seen to enable flexibility and allow differences to co-exist. This might require new, perhaps radical, thinking about how to organise, conduct and value research and its outcomes, with an increased emphasis on fostering, appreciating and productively working with diversity and institutional indeterminacy

Co-producing Future Earth: ambiguity and experimentation in the governance of global environmental change research

The aim of this thesis is to investigate efforts to transform global environmental change research through co-design and co-production (involving non-academic actors in research governance and conduct). Social scientific work to date on this topic has largely taken an evaluative perspective, outlining challenges of and guidelines for co-production on the ground. By contrast, there is little work on how co-production is conceptualised and put into practice through (international) research governance. Yet institutions aiming to govern research are significant arbiters of meaning and power; their efforts to change research are worthy of investigation. The thesis is based on a qualitative case study of Future Earth, a major international research initiative on global environmental change (GEC) and sustainability. Future Earth is unique in its ambition to internationally coordinate and co-design/co-produce new GEC/sustainability research at a global scale. The study is grounded in co-productionist, interpretive science and technology studies, drawing on ideas about political imaginaries of science and experimental approaches to engagement. It is based on thematic analysis of data from documents, interviews, focus groups and observation of Future Earth’s emergence and development between 2010 and 2015. The analysis suggests that visions of Future Earth were ambitious, diverse and sometimes ambiguous, evoking two potential institutional forms: a unified, cohesive ‘flagship’, or a ‘rich tapestry’ of varied initiatives. Ambiguity persisted in how co-production and related concepts were understood, with varying definitions motivated by different rationales for increased (or limited) involvement of non-academic stakeholders, from ensuring relevance to democratising expertise to preserving the objectivity or independence of science. These notions of appropriate engagement were underpinned by disparate conceptions of the value of research (as a service to society, site of democratic deliberation, or public good), reproducing (and challenging) established models of science and democracy. The thesis argues that, from an experimental perspective, this ambiguity in visions of (co-production in) Future Earth can be seen to enable flexibility and allow differences to co-exist. This might require new, perhaps radical, thinking about how to organise, conduct and value research and its outcomes, with an increased emphasis on fostering, appreciating and productively working with diversity and institutional indeterminacy

Report on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Workshop

The potential for an ongoing interdisciplinary conversation about RRI at the University of Nottingham (UoN) was identified during a research project conducted in summer 2014 to investigate how RRI is being interpreted within UoN (Pearce et al., 2014). On 8th January 2015, following a public lecture by Professor Richard Owen, University of Exeter, on ‘Responsible Research and Innovation: From nice words to meaningful action’, 18 participants from 11 schools and departments across UoN gathered to address the following workshop aims: 1. Establish an RRI network across UoN; 2. Share understandings of RRI from different perspectives and disciplines; 3. Explore what the RRI agenda means, how we might want to respond and what support might be needed. The Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Workshop was convened and facilitated by Dr Sarah Hartley (School of Biosciences) and Dr Warren Pearce (School of Sociology and Social Policy), with financial support from the Leverhulme Trust ‘Making Science Public’ programme and the Science,Technology and Society Priority Group

Governing plant‐centred eating at the urban scale in the UK: The Sustainable Food Cities network and the reframing of dietary biopower

Recent years have seen an increase in actions to address a key feature of food in the Anthropocene: the over-production and consumption of animal-based foods or ‘animalisation’ of diets. However, it is unclear whether such efforts can be understood as a coherent institutional level response that will challenge hegemonic dietary biopower, a regime of governance that normalises and reproduces animal-based food consumption. Building on scholarship that explores food governance initiatives in urban contexts and dietary biopower across a range of empirical cases, this paper explores whether, how and with what consequences governance actors within urban food partnerships (UFP) of the UK Sustainable Food Cities (SFC) network are working to reframe dietary biopower so that humans are disciplined to eat less animal-based food and instead to adopt a more plant-centred diet. Document analysis and semi-structured interviews with SFC representatives suggest the breadth and depth of current UFP actions do not add up to a sustained challenge to hegemonic, animal-based dietary biopower. Rather, they reveal a plant-centred dietary biopolitical project in the making, while specific cases suggest that this project is more accurately conceptualised as arrested due to the pursuit of food system actions that are counter to and in tension with the promotion of plant-centred eating. We suggest that a more coherent reframing of dietary biopower would entail urban food governance actors engaging consistently and robustly with the debates surrounding animal-based foods, as well as identifying and enacting synergies between plant-centred eating, food poverty and local economic development agendas

Report on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Workshop

The potential for an ongoing interdisciplinary conversation about RRI at the University of Nottingham (UoN) was identified during a research project conducted in summer 2014 to investigate how RRI is being interpreted within UoN (Pearce et al., 2014).On 8th January 2015, following a public lecture by Professor Richard Owen, University of Exeter, on ‘Responsible Research and Innovation: From nice wordsto meaningful action’, 18 participants from 11 schools and departments across UoN gathered to address the following workshop aims:1. Establish an RRI network across UoN;2. Share understandings of RRI from different perspectives and disciplines;3. Explore what the RRI agenda means, how we might want to respond and what support might be needed.The Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Workshop was convened and facilitated by Dr Sarah Hartley (School of Biosciences) and Dr Warren Pearce (School of Sociology and Social Policy), with financial support from theLeverhulme Trust ‘Making Science Public’ programme and the Science,Technology and Society Priority Group

A ‘living’ guide to fostering collaborative practices in RENEW. Iteration 1.0 (March 2023)

The RENEW project has its foundations in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration, that is, research reaching across disciplines and beyond academia. This document aims to facilitate consideration of, and guide, collaborative practices within and around RENEW. It will act as a ‘living’ resource for RENEW members and partners to use and feed into; this is the first of several planned versions that the Collaboration in Practice team will produce through the project lifetime. In addition to internal versions, at a later stage, drawing on collective learning in RENEW, we will develop this into a publicly available manifesto for collaborative practice, building on other manifestos about wildlife conservation, and interdisciplinarity across natural and social sciences. This first iteration provides several prompts and working recommendations, based on our review of the academic literature and ‘best practice’ reports on interdisciplinarity, co-production, and other modes of research that bring together people from diverse disciplines and sectors. It is a start point, so please contact the authors - the Collaboration in Practice (X3) team of RENEW (https://renewbiodiversity.org.uk/) if you have feedback, additions, amendments, or related ideas

Beyond counting climate consensus

Several studies have been using quantified consensus within climate science as an argument to foster climate policy. Recent efforts to communicate such scientific consensus attained a high public profile but it is doubtful if they can be regarded successful. We argue that repeated efforts to shore up the scientific consensus on minimalist claims such as ‘humans cause global warming’ are distractions from more urgent matters of knowledge, values, policy framing and public engagement.  Such efforts to force policy progress through communicating scientific consensus misunderstand the relationship between scientific knowledge, publics and policymakers. More important is to focus on genuinely controversial issues within climate policy debates where expertise might play a facilitating role. Mobilising expertise in policy debates calls for judgment, context and attention to diversity, rather than deferring to formal quantifications of narrowly scientific claims

Priorities for social science and humanities research on the challenges of moving beyond animal-based food systems

Increasingly high-profile research is being undertaken into the socio-environmental challenges associated with the over-production and consumption of food from animals. Transforming food systems to mitigate climate change and hidden hunger, ensure food security and good health all point to reducing animal-based foods as a key lever. Moving beyond animal-based food systems is a societal grand challenge requiring coordinated international research by the social sciences and humanities. A 'selective openness' to this range of disciplines has been observed within multi-discipline research programmes designed to address societal grand challenges including those concerned with the sustainability of food systems, inhibiting the impact of social sciences and humanities. Further, existing research on animal-based foods within these disciplines is largely dispersed and focused on particular parts of food systems. Inspired by the 'Sutherland Method' this paper discusses the results of an iterative research prioritisation process carried out to enhance capacity, mutual understanding and impact amongst European social sciences and humanities researchers. The process produced 15 research questions from an initial list of 100 and classified under the following five themes: (1) debating and visioning food from animals; (2) transforming agricultural spaces; (3) framing animals as food; (4) eating practices and identities; and (5) governing transitions beyond animal-based food systems. These themes provide an important means of making connections between research questions that invite and steer research on key challenges in moving beyond animal-based food systems. The themes also propose loci for future transdisciplinary research programmes that join researchers from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities and stakeholders from beyond academia to develop cooperative research and implementation initiatives. The experiences gained from the prioritisation process draw attention to the value of spending time to discuss and collaboratively steer research enquiry into emergent and controversial matters of concern. Fundamental, ethical questions around the continuation or complete cessation of the use of animals for food was a key tension. The positioning of research towards these questions affects not only the framing of the research area but also the partners with whom the research can be carried out and for whom it may be of benefit.peerReviewe

Making science public: challenges and opportunities

This Programme investigated the relationship between science, politics and publics in the aftermath of an influential 2000 UK House of Lords Science and Society report. We conceptualised top-down initiatives promising greater transparency around the use of scientific evidence in policymaking and opportunities for public engagement around research and innovation agendas, as well as bottom-up instances of public mobilisation around science as an effort to make science public. In principle, such a movement seemed to speak directly to wider arguments for ‘opening up’ controversial domains of evidence and research to public scrutiny of framing, tacit assumptions, and alternative forms of expertise. Yet, these promises raised a number of dilemmas that we sought to examine in a range of cases

Priorities for social science and humanities research on the challenges of moving beyond animal-based food systems

Increasingly high-profile research is being undertaken into the socio-environmental challenges associated with the over-production and consumption of food from animals. Transforming food systems to mitigate climate change and hidden hunger, ensure food security and good health all point to reducing animal-based foods as a key lever. Moving beyond animal-based food systems is a societal grand challenge requiring coordinated international research by the social sciences and humanities. A 'selective openness' to this range of disciplines has been observed within multi-discipline research programmes designed to address societal grand challenges including those concerned with the sustainability of food systems, inhibiting the impact of social sciences and humanities. Further, existing research on animal-based foods within these disciplines is largely dispersed and focused on particular parts of food systems. Inspired by the 'Sutherland Method' this paper discusses the results of an iterative research prioritisation process carried out to enhance capacity, mutual understanding and impact amongst European social sciences and humanities researchers. The process produced 15 research questions from an initial list of 100 and classified under the following five themes: (1) debating and visioning food from animals; (2) transforming agricultural spaces; (3) framing animals as food; (4) eating practices and identities; and (5) governing transitions beyond animal-based food systems. These themes provide an important means of making connections between research questions that invite and steer research on key challenges in moving beyond animal-based food systems. The themes also propose loci for future transdisciplinary research programmes that join researchers from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities and stakeholders from beyond academia to develop cooperative research and implementation initiatives. The experiences gained from the prioritisation process draw attention to the value of spending time to discuss and collaboratively steer research enquiry into emergent and controversial matters of concern. Fundamental, ethical questions around the continuation or complete cessation of the use of animals for food was a key tension. The positioning of research towards these questions affects not only the framing of the research area but also the partners with whom the research can be carried out and for whom it may be of benefit