Supporting institutional transformations: experimenting with reflexive and embodied cross-boundary research

The sustainable management of natural resources (SMNR) is concerned with socially and environmentally just decision-making processes around the access to, and the control over, natural resources. However, SMNR is imbued of multiple (and conflictual) intersecting knowledges, practice, expertise and value systems, as well as unequal power relations. This makes achieving meaningful and inclusive collaborative practices far from straightforward, and by no means easy to guarantee. This chapter discusses some evidence from Wales, drawing from a wider cross-boundary doctoral research project (led by the first author) on collaborative forms of SMNR, co-developed by a small transdisciplinary team of academics (the two co-authors) and (cross-divisional) civil servants within Welsh Government. Specifically, this chapter discusses the first author’s experience of transdisciplinary collaboration through the methodological lens provided by blending the Formative Accompanying Research (Freeth, R. (2019). Formative Accompanying Research with Collaborative Interdisciplinary Teams. Doctoral Thesis.) and the Embodied Researcher approach (Horlings et al., 2020). We offer a critical reflection on the first-hand experience of co-experimenting alongside policy actors with alternative and more creative ways of working in the spaces in between the written publication and implementation of SMNR legislation and policy.

We explore the role of creative methods such as Theory U (Scharmer, 2018) in further promoting collaborative processes of meaning-making in transdisciplinary research settings, highlighting their contribution towards enabling emotional and embodied ways of working to be forefronted. In so doing, the chapter illustrates the role of emotional labour, vulnerability and energy in such co-experimental work by emphasizing the need for the practicing of care in building relationships of trust and collaboration, especially within the context of just sustainability transformations. We conclude by stressing the importance of dedicating sufficient time and resources to enable a culture of care (Bellacasa, 2017; Tronto, 2013) such that embodied and collaborative ways of working can be more fully supported and understood within governmental institutions.