Narrow Results

The Human Biomedical Research Act: Overview and International Comparisons.

Tissue Banking in Singapore – An Evolving Enterprise.

After Ebola, Social Justice as a Base for a Biobanking Governance Framework.

Community Engagement for Biobanking Research: Perspectives from Africa.

The Australian "Committing to Place" Research Project investigates the potential of outreach activities and educational programmes to increase community commitment to natural resource management. New communication technologies offer tools for enhancing participation — in terms of a deeper commitment from communities and participation of a wider range of groups — through their interactive qualities and capacity to link people in different places. The research project evaluates the piloting, by the National Museum of Australia, of several innovative outreach activities which use information and communication technologies specifically for community capacity building and developing platforms for change. With an understanding of evaluation as research to inform decision-making at all phases of project design, the Research Team is evaluating: (1) the effectiveness of each outreach activity in meeting stakeholder objectives, including community participants; (2) the potential each activity has to increase participation in the activity and other activities associated with cultural heritage or natural resources; and (3) progress towards "the higher purpose", that is, the potential for such activities to affect natural resource management outcomes in the long run. The research project is an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant involving the University of Tasmania, the National Museum of Australia, and the Murray–Darling Basin Commission.

The "decide-announce-defend" approach to decision-making offers few meaningful opportunities for engagement in decision processes and communities and individuals frequently feel isolated from decisions. Correspondingly, many practitioners believe science is misunderstood by communities and that messages on risk are susceptible to distortion or misrepresentation. Many voices have called for more inclusive approaches to the analysis and management of risk. Here, we draw on theoretical and practical insights from the fields of risk communication, community engagement and contaminated land management, to explore some of the unique issues involved in communicating risk issues to lay audiences, and to identify principles for engaging communities in contaminated land risk management.

There is a growing recognition that community engagement generates spillover effects, though few empirical analyses have accounted for these often intangible and nonlinear impacts. In the broader political economy of disaster risk reduction (DRR), spillovers present participatory research and practice with opportunities for leveling the resource arguments that currently favor deficit-based communications. A central, unexplored hypothesis of participatory research is as follows: If spillovers result from some forms of community engagement, affecting change in participants and non-participants, then the associated costs of community engagement may be justified by the value of changes that spillover. The possibility of spillovers, while enticing, is hampered by present gaps with regard to the ability to design, implement, and measure targeted spillovers. More simply, spillovers likely follow all social relations, but the ability to target specific outcomes following participation remains presently unknown. Focusing on flood risk reduction in Melbourne, Australia, the community engagement for disaster risk reduction (CEDRR) project utilized “relationship building” to test whether efforts to support flood risk reduction also resulted in spillovers to other aspects of participants’ lives, including to non-participants. To analyze this theoretical possibility, we partnered with a senior citizens’ organization: The University of the Third Age (U3A). Within DRR, senior citizens are often portrayed as inherently vulnerable; while within the aging literature, loneliness and isolation are shown to be key detriments to “successful aging”. The relationship-building methodology, then, aligns with both community engagement and successful aging literatures, enabling an analysis of targeted spillovers related to risk reduction actions and successful aging. Engagements on the topic of flood risk were analyzed to determine whether they had spillover effects on participants’ flood risk actions or on their successful aging outcomes. Findings from 45 remote survey-interviews and 30 follow-up engagements demonstrate that relationship building is an enjoyable form of community engagement able to promote learning, skill development, and intellectual risk-taking (i.e., elements of successful aging). In addition to successful aging, relationship building also contributed to household flood risk reduction behaviors, as well as initiating spillovers to non-participants. These exploratory findings suggest an under-accounted impact of participatory flood risk reduction, which suggests a need to broaden the measurement of “impacts” to include the benefits that spillover to other risk contexts and/or to other individuals.

Across three years (2017–2020), the ESRC Seminar series, “Civil Agency, Society and Climate Adaptation to Weather Extremes” (CASCADE-NET) critically examined the changing role of civil society in extreme weather adaptation. One full-day seminar explored “less heard voices” within Civil Society, considering ways of engaging diverse groups in resiliency, knowledge exchange, and capacity building. A small interdisciplinary group from the seminar followed up with a roundtable discussion, conducted online, discussing first who the less-heard voices in society are, and how labels, such as “vulnerable” and “hard to reach”, might need to be reappraised, and concluding that it is often those in power who make themselves “hard to reach” and who fail to listen. The group then discussed how deeper engagement with citizens and communities can be achieved through improved relationships and networks. Finally, the roundtable discussed how the succession of crises affecting the UK (and other settings) could, paradoxically, present an opportune moment to press the case for a more joined-up and inclusive civil society. The concluding section summarizes key insights from the roundtable and identifies opportunities to rethink engagement with “hard to reach” groups. To answer our question of “how to” engage diverse groups, we conclude with the action points to change the orientation of the powerful to (i) be genuinely open to listening to, and acting upon the voices of less heard groups; (ii) listen on the terms of groups who are voicing their experience, rather than force them into pre-arranged consultation formats; (iii) engage early, widely and frequently; (iv) build trust by demonstrating willingness to listen, through actions; (v) tackle historical mistrust, unequal resources, experiences of neglect or exploitation that undermine groups’ interest in engaging with the powerful. A transformation in orientation to community engagement is in order if we are to produce effective, locally attuned, collective action in the face of social shocks.

This paper proposes a critical reflection on the use of language to address the challenge of promoting and supporting civic agencies in adaptation to increasing extreme weather risk. Such reflection needs to focus on the opportunities and limitations of language, and the navigation amongst multiple or contested meanings within interdisciplinary and inter-sectorial collaborations. This commentary was inspired by the authors’ conversations on their journey in writing the paper — Liguori et al. (2023) “Exploring the uses of arts-led community spaces to build resilience: Applied storytelling for successful co-creative work” and the impact it had on their understanding of various language systems. Here writing was conceived as a form of networking, undertaking a sequence of intimate, in-depth discussions in a safe space. ‘Playing’ with words, moving out from our disciplinary homes, provided a fertile way of thinking within multi/inter-sectorial/disciplinary conversations to expand the language system for meaningful community engagement around local climate adaptation. Three key terms were at the core of these diverse — and sometimes divergent — ways of looking at social preparedness for extreme weather events: disruption, empowerment, and creative ecosystem. The meta-reflections, based on iterative conversations around these three key terms, highlight the importance of explorations of language as a generative meaning-making process that can be boundary-spanning.

There is significant value in understanding the implications of language used in public engagement — its different interpretations, their loading and potential for transformed thinking when conceived creatively. Such insight can contribute to more effective approaches for participatory research and practice working with communities when addressing issues related to climate adaptation. This commentary argues that the socially engaged or participatory arts are particularly well placed to be active in such processes.

Transdisciplinary innovation — what is it and how does it work? In this paper, the way disparate professional and community actors may work together is considered, drawing on case study data from three different Australian–Indian academic research collaborations. One considered food sector SME innovation practice in the two countries and the other two considered the deployment in India of radical technologies developed by international teams to deliver social benefits. The collection of knowledge artifacts from disparate sources was the norm. Implementation of an innovative idea or technology application commonly involved interactive learning from parallel testing of possible combinations. Six themes to be explored further emerged from this exploratory study. These related to social networking, interaction protocols, the use of boundary objects, knowledge sharing and modes of research.

The increasing magnitude and frequency of natural disasters put growing pressure on disaster risk reduction (DRR). DRR strategies have traditionally relied upon risk identification as the first step in assessing disaster risks, but they are incapable of planning for all risks that a community will face. In most countries, current DRR strategies focus on prevention and mitigation of identifiable risks. They seek to build specified resilience — resilience to known risks. On the contrary, there are no strategies that aim to build general resilience to address unexpected risks. This is also the case for South Australia, where this study took place. This chapter explains the importance of broadening the focus of DRR strategies beyond specified resilience to also include general resilience. Starting from a sense-making framework on resilience to known and unexpected risks, focus group discussions were facilitated to assess systemic conditions that have an impact on community resilience to unexpected risks, that is, those that most people are not prepared to face. System of Systems (SoS) and complex systems thinking (CST) were used to explore potential to integrate systemic approaches to current DRR strategies. The study involved community members, the Australian Red Cross and State Government agencies responsible for disaster mitigation and prevention in South Australia. Systemic factors residing outside the scope of the investigated DRR SoS highlighted the need for “feedback policies” that take into account modern community routines and new characteristics of social relations dynamically. Key recommendations and insights have local, national and international relevance.