| Summary: | <pre style="text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #000000;">Human influences on Earth's natural systems are accelerating, with anthropogenic climate and global change posing existential risks for mankind. To overcome the policy implementation gap in practice both collective and </span><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">transformative</span><span style="color: #000000;"> actions for sustainability involving science, policy and society are urgently needed. In the realms of science, this relates to taking inter-and </span><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">transdisciplinary</span><span style="color: #000000;"> research approaches to foster exchange and co-designing policy options between researcher, decision-makers and other societal stakeholders; however, such collaboration is often limited by time, funding and complexity constrains. </span></pre> <pre style="text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></pre> <pre style="text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #000000;">This paper recognises that particularly early career climate change and sustainability researchers are exposed to both the claim for and practical challenges of inter- and </span><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">transdisciplinarity</span><span style="color: #000000;">. For a first qualitative investigation of Austrian early career </span><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">researchers’</span><span style="color: #000000;"> preparedness for conducting participatory research with societal stakeholders, this study examines perspectives of twelve early career researchers participating in a young scientists' workshop. </span></pre> <pre style="text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px;"><br /></pre> <pre style="text-indent: 0px; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #000000;">Using a pre-post survey and analysing data by content, our findings indicate that workshop participants have to manage stakeholder processes directly after graduation and, due to a lack of methodological training, only use a small fraction of existing social science methods and participatory settings for stakeholder collaboration. To support other early career researchers and future students in Austria in developing strong inter-and </span><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">transdisciplinary</span><span style="color: #000000;"> research skills, we highlight the added-value of integrating hands-on workshops with societal stakeholders, regular exchange of lessons learned and </span><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">transdisciplinary</span><span style="color: #000000;"> lectures into university education. Offering more practice-oriented </span><span style="text-decoration: underline; color: #000000;">transdisciplinary</span><span style="color: #000000;"> learning activities during undergraduate education, like excursions and mini-projects in which students can develop and train participatory methods together with stakeholders under guidance, is believed to be a fruitful strategy in this context. </span></pre><!-- p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; } -->
|
|---|