Workshop: Leading Arctic Convergence Research with the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Irvine, CA - Fall 2019

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to develop and execute a workshop that will enhance capacity among natural, physical, engineering, and social scientists to develop transdisciplinary, convergence research projects related to the Arctic that are deeply engaged with social and behavioral science. The University of California, Irvine convenes scholars from diverse STEM fields across the United States who wish to undertake convergence research related to environmental change in the Arctic as envisioned in NSF's Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) Big Idea. The workshop offers training activities to enhance their capacity to do so in a manner that deeply integrates the social and behavioral sciences and engages local and indigenous communities in equitable collaborations for the co-production of knowledge. In so doing, the project expands understanding of interdisciplinary integration in convergence research in ways that will broadly enhance convergence research theory and practice as it relates to the Arctic. An intended outcome of the workshop will be an enhancement of capacity to prepare social and behavioral science-led proposals that align with and robustly advance the goals and objectives of NSF's NNA Big Idea. Participants includes scholars who both have and have not previously conducted research in the Arctic. The workshop focuses on stimulating research on the impact of the changing Arctic on the rest of the globe outside the Arctic as well as on the impact of the changing Arctic on people who live in the Arctic. A growing body of literature points to the need for deep integration of the social, natural/physical, and engineering sciences in research frameworks to address increasingly complex, "wicked" problems associated with global environmental change. Yet, such integration is often difficult to accomplish, and obstacles to interdisciplinary integration in research remain. The proposed workshop addresses three key objectives: 1) How to integrate social and behavioral science theory and develop rigorous social science methodologies in Arctic convergence research; 2) How to engage and work with local communities, including indigenous communities, and integrate traditional/indigenous ecological knowledge into Arctic environmental change research; 3) How to incorporate best practices and processes for designing convergence research frameworks in the planning and execution of Arctic research projects, including strategies of cross-disciplinary knowledge integration, university-community partnerships for co- production and utilization of knowledge, and (cyber)research infrastructure needed to work with and integrate different kinds of data and analysis. Project funds will support the onsite participation of approximately 55 individuals, including up to 10 speakers/facilitators, and the workshop sessions will be webcast via Zoom to facilitate the virtual participation of others who may be unable to travel to Irvine. Workshop proceedings will be recorded, and transcriptions will be made broadly available along with a workshop report, and other resource materials generated via two public digital platforms, the NSF Arctic Data Center and the Platform for Experimental and Collaborative Ethnography. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.