Co-creative methods for practicing care-full scholarship (Gloria Giambartolomei)

Speaker: Gloria Giambartolomei

In the chapter which accompanies the below guest contributions from Gloria Giambartolomei the authors (Giambartolomei et al. 2022) offer an extended reflection on the dual challenges and rewards of engaging in transdisciplinary science where it involves a government institution, and where it constitutes the central pivot of a doctoral degree. At the same time, however, they argue for the potentially profound value of such a coupling when it comes to making a difference with one’s research. Key here is the opportunity that such ‘spaces in-between’ present for outing the emotional and embodied dimensions of collaborative ‘doing’ transdisciplinary research. Drawing on Giambartolomei’s first-hand experience of working with the Welsh Government, and supported further by a conceptual lens of care, the authors explain how more meaningful relationships between academics and policy-makers might be established and nurtured. In particular, they discuss the opportunities that transdisciplinary science creates for reinvigorating reflexive forms of governance and, in turn (in their research case at least), a willingness by governmental institutions to trial more (co-)creative and care-full forms of natural resources management.