Blog on Complex, Actionable Team Science—Started at SESYNC—Celebrates Its 10th Birthday

News: Research Highlight
The i2Insights Integration and Implementation Insights logo with the following text below it: "A community blog and repository of resources for improving research impact on complex real-world problems"

A popular blog that emerged from the cross-collaboration of three SESYNC synthesis projects will soon celebrate its 10 th year of publication. Created in 2015, the Integration and Implementation Insights (i2Insights) blog/toolkit started as a way for SESYNC researchers to share resources they developed while completing projects focused on actionable team science. The three projects—Co-creative capacity, Core modeling practices, and Participatory socio-environmental modeling—fell under SESYNC’s broader project theme, Building resources for complex, action-oriented team science.

In the decade since, i2Insights has evolved into a platform with nearly 600 resources. These materials aim to share various methods, frameworks, processes, concepts, theories, and competencies that can aid researchers in tackling complex-socio-environmental issues. In fact, i2Insights covers a range of topic areas related to team science and actionable research, including integration of multiple and varied perspectives, research implementation, stakeholder engagement, and more. 

The 11 core topic areas that i2Insights covers: 1) Taking a systems perspective; 2) Understanding context; 3) Understanding and managing unknowns; 4) Harnessing diversity; 5) Integration of multiple and varied perspectives; 6) Effective decision making; 7) Research implementation; 8) Understanding the process involved in change; 9) Improving communication; 10) Teamwork; 11)Stakeholder engagment

The blog has benefitted from the contributions of 750 scholars, representing 61 different countries—including several researchers from SESYNC. 

Dr. Gabriele Bammer, the curator of i2Insights and a former visiting scholar at SESYNC from 2015–2018, explained that almost all the participants from the first three SESYNC teams created resources for the initial toolkit. In fact, more than 10% of the current collection of resources have originated from SESYNC projects. 

“These contributions really established i2Insights as a global, comprehensive, living toolkit for researchers who are tackling complex societal and environmental problems,” said Bammer. “What’s more, it is read in all 193 countries that are members of the United Nations.” 

Believing in the power of sharing knowledge and experience, SESYNC leadership have also contributed to the blog over the years, providing insight into SESYNC’s process for effective interdisciplinary research. SESYNC Director Margaret Palmer and former Director of Social Science & Policy Jim Boyd recently expanded on this topic with an open-access article they published this year, called A stepwise process for actionable environmental science research.

This article, together with the resources found on both i2Insights’ and SESYNC’s websites, provide researchers with free, useful materials for growing capacity and understanding of interdisciplinary socio-environmental research. 

Once again, SESYNC congratulates i2Insights on its milestone birthday and celebrates our shared commitment to providing open-access knowledge for all interested users. 

To learn more, visit: https://i2insights.org/

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