Global change science has become more international in scope and transdisciplinary in nature, in response to the social expectation that scientific knowledge should inform collective action and our ability to cope with a warming world. How do we integrate knowledge to catalyze action, not only across scales of analysis, but across diverse cultures, social and political differences, and human geographies ?
In this article, published in Science, Technology, & Human Values (the flagship journal of 4S, the Society for the Social Study of Science), we move past idealized models of the science–policy interface (i.e. the "linear model") to examine the geopolitical dynamics of knowledge mobilization. We explore how the science-policy interface as a human ecosystem, including how works on the ground, in diverse settings and cultures, across the Américas.
While this paper is an outgrowth of my Fulbright NEXUS collaboration with scholars from across the hemisphere (Nicole Klenk in Canada and Fabián Mendez in Colombia), the NEXUS research directly inspired the goals and content of the Knowledge Integration project. What analysis of the NEXUS reveals, echoed in the bones of our current project, is that geopolitical asymmetries and friction cannot easy be scrubbed out of international, interdisciplinary collaborations. They must be navigated--and that requires a personal skillset that does not come easily.
Read more about it here! If you cannot access the article, please email Katie Meehan (meehan@uoregon.edu) for a PDF copy.
-Katie Meehan
Image (above): Sakurako Gibo, California College of the Arts (CCA). Inspired by soil science, the image depicts a theoretical assemblage of soil microbes with different morphologies (for instance round spores versus string-like mycelia).