17 February 2021
14.00-16.00 (UTC/GMT)

As the ESRC STEPS Centre enters its final year, focusing on the theme of Methods, join the first in a series of virtual dialogues on methodologies, exploring the theme of ‘Challenging Research’ for sustainability. Register online for this event.

In this first event on 17 February, we discuss the ideas and praxis involved in ‘opening up’ and ‘broadening out’ sustainability research. What does it mean to ‘open up’ research to enable plural knowledges and views to be included and considered? Why and how do we ‘broaden out’ to reveal potential pathways of development that could support diverse emancipatory futures?

This event brings together sustainability researchers from the STEPS global consortium and beyond to discuss and compare their ideas and experiences. The panel will reflect on their diverse transdisciplinary journeys, and stimulate discussion about the kinds of methodological assemblages, frameworks, tools and associated ways of being that might enable us collectively to push our praxis towards transformation.

Speakers

Andy Stirling (STEPS/University of Sussex); Anabel Marin (IDS); Lakshmi Charli-Joseph and Patricia Pérez-Belmont (LANCIS-IE-UNAM/Umbela); Dr Joel Onyango and Joanes Atela (ACTS/ARIN)

How to join

This event is held on Zoom. You must register in order to attend. Visit the registration page: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUlce2rqjwtE9DqLhIw7UTVDcLaQJO8XYPb and you will receive a link and instructions by email.

About the Challenging Research series

Faced with multiple intersecting crises and long-term social and ecological problems, sustainability research is called to challenge power, revealing alternative pathways to diverse futures. But it is hampered by hidden assumptions about objective knowledge, market forces and disciplinary silos, an artificial boundary between action and knowledge, and pressures for research to narrow down its questions and reach single answers or ‘solutions’.

The Challenging Research events critically examine the roles of methods and methodologies in addressing these problems, through a series of conversations between researchers and others mobilising for change around the world.

The series includes events convened by the ESRC STEPS Centre (co-hosted by IDS and SPRU, University of Sussex), ARIN (African Research and Impact Network), and events in Mexico coordinated by the NGO Umbela Transformaciones Sostenibles, co-coordinated by LANCIS-IE-UNAM, and in association with IIMAS-UNAM and the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University.

To be informed of future events, subscribe to the STEPS events e-newsletter.