Intervening in interventions: Exploring the implications of novel technologies through multidisciplinary lenses.
- 1University of York, Biology, York, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (kelly.redeker@york.ac.uk)
- 2University of York, Education, York, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- 3University of York, Environment and Geography, York, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- 4University of York, Chemistry, York, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
We present a British Academy funded Knowledge Frontiers project which brought together an interdisciplinary team of social (Anthropology, Education, Human Geography, Politics) and scientific (Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Science) researchers to explore the implications of bioethanol-from-cellulose reactors, a novel technology that may provide an innovative, partial solution to the global need for sustainable fuels. These reactors utilize ‘waste’ biomass, either residue from crops or that which can be grown on ‘marginal lands’, thus producing (second generation) biofuels while avoiding the “food versus fuel” debate. The team analysed assumptions inherent within this approach and considered how to interact with this innovation/implementation process to maximally address broader social and environmental goals.
As a research community we queried the priorities and criteria used in developing new technological solutions and investigated how decisions were made across a range of stakeholders. We focused specifically on a case study of the first large-scale second generation bio-refinery, located in Brazil. Developing ongoing and consistent relationships between social scientists and natural scientists were key to delivering project aims, including documentation of the processes of learning/interacting that we engaged in as a team and ongoing dialogues across research assumptions and expectations within different disciplines.
Key components of the interdisciplinary process that appeared to be necessary for success included i) providing sustained and open opportunities for interaction between researchers to develop effective communication across disciplines, ii) explicitly exploring discipline-specific taken-for-granted assumptions and identifying what individuals understand when talking about key terms and processes (in this case these included, for example, ‘sustainable’, ‘development’, ‘methodology’, ‘marginal land’ and ‘research outputs’), iii) creating solidarity within the research community, which is critical for effective interaction between disciplines and cultures. This interplay between disciplines provides an innovative way to influence decision-making in science directly, especially at early stages of development. By directly addressing these requirements, multi/transdisciplinary challenges can be addressed in a manner which is more open, more critical and more able to reveal most effective solutions.
How to cite: Redeker, K., Brown, E., Brooks, S., Dunlop, L., Kirshner, J., Friend, R., and Walton, P.: Intervening in interventions: Exploring the implications of novel technologies through multidisciplinary lenses., EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-14191, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-14191, 2020
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Hi Kelly,
Thanks for participating in the Live Chat on Monday. It was fun and also a bit nuts!
I wanted to follow up with a question that both Anthea and myself had for you. Did the biofuel project you refer to have any specific or particular problems with regards to the communication challenges that you refer to? i.e. what challenges - if any - were were specific to the biofuels project in terms of delivering the project and trying to achieve dialogue?
Looking forward to hearing your experience -
Jen
Hi Jen,
I thought the session went very well, lots of discussion and well moderated on the fly!
In terms of the question "Did the biofuel project you refer to have any specific or particular problems with regards to the communication challenges that you refer to? i.e. what challenges - if any - were were specific to the biofuels project in terms of delivering the project and trying to achieve dialogue?"
The short answer would be "Yes". There were quite a few specific language issues, some of which might be obvious like the the already discussed meanings of "development" or "sustainable" which often changed depending on the perspective (i.e.- economic, equity, environmental) of the specific individual. Less obvious terminology issues included the meaning of "active site" when referring to enzymes and the impact that this has on the efficacy of the technology when it is employed, as well as a number of social science/humanities-based terminology such as "dialogue" which has specific meaning that was not immediately clear to the science disciplines.
I felt, coming in to the project, that there was an onus on the scientists to be very clear about the meaning of the words that they used but it was clear that it was just as important for the humanities and social science members to be equally clear about their own specialized language. We, as a group, benefitted from some processes that extended our timeline and allowed us the time to really meet and explore, multiple times, a range of these terminologies across the research timeline.
In terms of discipline-specific language issues, it was also important to clarify what was necessary for successful research and impactful outcomes across the range of disciplines, in that publishing in a social science context does not look the same as in a scientific journal, and neither of these is the same as publishing in a humanities context. So we had to clarify what was needed, and in what forms, to allow people to create useful outputs. It was during these phases of discussion that it became clear that some topic foci would not be usefully targeted by this research (e.g.- long term environmental research) while others would be much more usefully developed (e.g. - interdisciplinary interactions, social equity derived from biotechnological interventions).
I hope that this answers your question, let me know if there are specific, particular aspects that you wanted to know about!
Kelly
This is great, thanks Kelly.
Hi Kelly
This was a really interesting session and good to talk/chat - I think we learnt to do this better and better as the week progressed!
It was really good to hear about your and the wider work that you are doing with STRIPES. Yes I agree there is a very good overlap with the approaches we both discussed. It is interesting to hear that the team identity became more social science focussed as the work progressed: converting the ideas into the community and individual narrative.
Do keep in touch – it would be good to talk about how we can build some commonalities. I’m at j.bruun@exeter.ac.uk.
Best John
Hi John,
Apoloies for the delay in response, this last week has been aprticularly challenging.
I look forward to the chance to talk more about your approach exploring commonalities across our experiences. I'm linking you and the study lead (Eleanor Brown) via email right now and hopefully we can connect sometime in the near future.
All the best,
Kelly