TY - JOUR
T1 - Putting transdisciplinary research into practice
T2 - A participatory approach to understanding change in coastal social-ecological systems
AU - Benham, Claudia F.
AU - Daniell, Katherine A.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2016/8/1
Y1 - 2016/8/1
N2 - As the health of many coastal ecosystems declines, there is an increasingly urgent need for research that transcends academic disciplines and can respond to complex environmental problems. While the benefits of transdisciplinary research are widely recognised, there are institutional and practical constraints on researchers wishing to put these approaches into practice. In this paper we seek to understand how incorporating participatory elements into research design and data collection can enhance the benefits of a transdisciplinary approach and improve outcomes for scientists and users of research. To do so, we describe and reflect on a transdisciplinary research project conducted in a large industrial port in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, Australia. Drawing on experiential observation and theoretical contributions from across the literatures on transdisciplinary and participatory research, we also develop an integrated research framework that can be applied across contexts. The research demonstrates that incorporating participatory techniques during the research scoping phase can help researchers to develop a transdisciplinary research programme that can both strengthen research outcomes and ensure their relevance to coastal communities and decision makers.
AB - As the health of many coastal ecosystems declines, there is an increasingly urgent need for research that transcends academic disciplines and can respond to complex environmental problems. While the benefits of transdisciplinary research are widely recognised, there are institutional and practical constraints on researchers wishing to put these approaches into practice. In this paper we seek to understand how incorporating participatory elements into research design and data collection can enhance the benefits of a transdisciplinary approach and improve outcomes for scientists and users of research. To do so, we describe and reflect on a transdisciplinary research project conducted in a large industrial port in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, Australia. Drawing on experiential observation and theoretical contributions from across the literatures on transdisciplinary and participatory research, we also develop an integrated research framework that can be applied across contexts. The research demonstrates that incorporating participatory techniques during the research scoping phase can help researchers to develop a transdisciplinary research programme that can both strengthen research outcomes and ensure their relevance to coastal communities and decision makers.
KW - Governance
KW - Great Barrier Reef
KW - Participation
KW - Research methodology
KW - Science-based policy
KW - Transdisciplinary research
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84964899984&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2016.04.005
DO - 10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2016.04.005
M3 - Article
SN - 0964-5691
VL - 128
SP - 29
EP - 39
JO - Ocean and Coastal Management
JF - Ocean and Coastal Management
ER -