RFP: ENHANCING SOCIO-ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH & EDUCATION
Proposal deadline: March 9, 2015 Details: http://www.sesync.org/opportunities/enhancing-socio-environmental-research-education Proposals are invited for synthesis projects focused on tools, methods, and other practices applicable to actionable team research on socio-environmental problems. Multiple teams will be supported, and together their syntheses will contribute towards the development of new toolkits, roadmaps, curricula, and other practical advice. Effective team science is key to finding solutions to socio-environmental problems. Many tools have been developed for integrating ideas, data, and methods across the diverse disciplines involved when researching complex problems. Similarly, practices have been identified that facilitate the linkage of research results with informed policy decisions. Relatively few of these tools and practices have been assessed and optimized for addressing socio-environmental challenges. We invite proposals for synthesis and refinement of the tools and practices of team science from all disciplinary sources for use in socio-environmental applications. The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) will fund up to six international teams (up to 12 members each) to meet over two years (approximately four three-day meetings per team) to analyze, evaluate, and synthesize the practices, tools, methods, and strategies of transdisciplinary team science to significantly improve research teams’ effectiveness at understanding socio-environmental problems and informing socio-environmental decisions. The focus may be on improving research methods, on educating new generations of researchers, or both. This call is open to researchers and educators with expertise in all aspects of the practice and scholarship of actionable team research, including diverse areas of environmental and social investigation and other areas that have not traditionally engaged in socio-environmental contexts, such as public health, international development, security, or other research areas. Successful proposals could include participants from a variety of relevant disciplines including environmental science, ecology, social psychology, systemic intervention, political science, organizational management, implementation science, cognitive science, operations research, information science, and computer science. PURPOSE The aim of the synthesis teams to be established under this proposal is to aggregate and synthesize the tools, methods, and other practices used in action-oriented team research as applicable to socio-environmental science. We encourage proposals that address issues across all stages throughout the lifecycle of an interdisciplinary project from problem formulation to approach design, data gathering analysis and synthesis, publication and other dissemination, implementation, and assessment, although individual teams might only work on a subset of these. Many types or combinations of synthesis approaches are possible and many sources of data for aggregation and analysis are appropriate, including diverse case study examples, concepts, methodologies, procedures, protocols, computational applications, or theoretical foundations. ADDITIONAL INFO Visit http://www.sesync.org/opportunities/enhancing-socio-environmental-research-education for complete details. Proposals must be received by March 9, 2015, at 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). QUESTIONS? For general inquiries, or contacts from individuals who are interested but are not currently part of a team, please contact Gabriele Bammer ( gabriele.bam...@anu.edu.au) or David Hawthorne (dhawtho...@sesync.org).
