The UK’s approach to international research collaboration

The UK’s approach to international research collaboration

Reported by Patrick McAlary, CSaP Policy Research Assistant

A roundtable discussion with Professor Melissa Leach, Director of the Institute of Development Studies, brought together scholars from the University of Cambridge, the Mastercard Foundation and CSaP Policy Fellows to discuss the UK’s approach to international research collaboration, with a focus on promoting resilience and sustainability.

Questions for research and policy

While participants noted a strong focus on meeting climate targets for 2030, they highlighted that this does not necessarily extend to 2050. It is important that researchers and policy makers ask what the next set of questions will be and work to identify the global evidence-base to inform those questions. Participants also raised questions about how to encourage governments to make evidence-based decisions that work for the long-term and how to trump political expediency. One participant noted that ministers were often distant from events on the ground, and therefore it's important to think about how to translate and bridge this mismatch of experience.

There are important questions about what the UK is trying to achieve through its international science-research partnerships — does it aim to address big global challenges; to make the UK more competitive; or to develop soft power instruments through science diplomacy? It may be that all of these are desired outcomes; however, questions remain regarding who should formulate these questions and projects and how far funding should be framed in relation to certain outcomes.

The funding dimension looms large in this: the UK’s exit from the European Union and the Horizon programme creates problems if it does not re-engage as a non-member. Official Development Assistance (ODA) has received cuts in recent years and one participant noted that ODA pushes money towards lower-middle income countries while many of the big questions have implications beyond these areas: we need partnerships that can link the global and the local. Participants also raised concerns that the technically-driven approach of the International Science Partnerships Fund may not create space for the wide array of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

Crossing boundaries

Participants placed great emphasis on the ‘inters’: international, interdisciplinary, intersectoral, intergenerational. There was frustration about value-laden terminology around ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences and the unequal hierarchies built around STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and Economy) disciplines.

Participants agreed that complex problems require multi-disciplinary approaches; however, they questioned if the training infrastructure in the UK supported people to become ‘interdisciplinary’, pointing to the vertical training programmes offered by institutions. Too often researchers are chained to their ‘ologies’ and there is a role for universities and funders in facilitating and promoting an interdisciplinary approach: interdisciplinary researchers are often penalised in terms of funding and career opportunities by systems that rely on categorisation into disciplines.

There are a host of fruitful intersections between the STEM and SHAPE disciplines. One participant noted that social scientists can support STEM-orientated colleagues by helping translate science into usable evidence. Another participant highlighted that the role of social science goes far beyond translation: big global issues like climate change and epidemics are as much social phenomena as scientific problems and the SHAPE disciplines may be better placed to set the questions.

There was general acknowledgement that plurality is key and that this extends beyond disciplinary divides. There are still divides between communities (broadly conceived) that are interested in climate and those interested in conservation and sustainable development. Participants called for a focus on end-users and those who are experiencing the impacts of changing weather patterns and biodiversity losses, communities that are often affected by cascading impacts in both the climate and development space. There is also an intergenerational element: one participant emphasised the importance of being good ancestors, pointing out that governments and science agencies are not engaging with young voices in a real way.

Communicating evidence and priorities

A recurrent theme was the role of communication and language. It was noted that policies are influenced by mainstream media, but researchers often struggle to communicate evidence-based science in an effective way. The experience of the pandemic, where communication of evidence was key, illustrated the importance of getting this right and the potential results when communication succeeds.

Participants discussed a disconnect between writing for science versus writing for policy and highlighted the importance of crafting messages for audiences and utilising innovating media platforms for maximum impact. Part of this is creating communication tools to get through to a range of different audiences. One such tool is the creation of a balance sheet for nature—that is quantifying natural capital—as a means of situating nature and its loss. Another participant highlighted that while tools and language exist to talk about emissions and global temperatures, this is not the case when it comes to the issue of climate adaption and resilience: it is important that conversations are taking place about helping communities manage the fallout of climate and nature breakdown.

Climate breakdown impacts are felt differently by communities across the globe and research needs to acknowledge and embed this diversity of experience: the experience in the UK is not the same as that in Nigeria. Researchers and policymakers must approach pathways of change in a way that is deliberative.

Participants pointed out that power relationships exist, but by acknowledging them more can be done to move away from a situation where decisions for the many are outsourced to the few. One participant commented on the importance of finding opportunity amongst different priorities. For instance, Africa is not a net-producer of carbon and it also has a young population so prioritises job creation, not carbon reduction. However, a focus on green jobs turns what could be conceived as a problem into an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

The importance of local voices was a thread that ran throughout the discussion and participants discussed the complexities around categorising such knowledge: who decides what is local or indigenous knowledge? It was acknowledged that communication is important for translating evidence and policies into actions that local people care about, but that businesses and policy makers are often excluded from the process whereby research is synthesised.

One participant also pointed to inequalities that exist in the transmission of research. They noted that open access publishing is expensive, meaning that there is a wealth of material from researchers in the Global South that goes unread—this is something that could be improved with relative ease.

To listen to Professor Leach’s Lecture on ‘Naturekind’ see here.

Image by Meg Nielson on Unsplash