Rhetoric and Reality of Real-World Laboratories for Sustainability
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Besprechung/Interview
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Transkript: Englisch(automatisch erzeugt)
00:00
Good evening to everybody. I'm quite happy to be here, and I'm happy that you are here as well. When I looked in the broken, I thought, oh my god, poor people. They have full days from morning to evening, and then I'm coming with real-world laboratories and trying to catch your attention.
00:21
I hope it will work. And when I started to prepare in the beginning, I said, oh, I could make some theoretical insights and success factors of real-world laboratories and such things. And then I thought about the late time in the evening and the hot temperatures,
00:40
and I decided to make more presentation with pictures and to include more kind of group discussions, so I hope it will work, although it's already a bit late in that day. So I was asked to introduce real-world laboratories to you,
01:04
and I said that I won't make such a scientific presentation, and for those who really feel unhappy about that, I just have one graph so that you have the feeling, oh yes, this woman, she has a little bit of an idea of science and can talk about real-world laboratories
01:22
as well as in a scientific way. I just wanted to show you with this graph that this term of lab, it's called lab in the real world, is becoming more and more a kind of trend or a kind of fashion maybe as well,
01:44
and so here somebody took the effort and counted all the publications related to such labs, and you can see it just twice, and I don't know why there is this going down, and in the end I just think they stopped to count,
02:02
but you can see there is a trend, and that's why maybe we are talking here in the summer school about this real-world laboratories as well. So this was the only graph. In the very beginning I want to give you some insight
02:21
into three real-world laboratories, and I have to apologize that these are only real-world labs in Baden-Württemberg. That's due to the fact that in this sphere of real-world laboratories, Baden-Württemberg in Germany has a little bit of a special role
02:41
because the Ministry of Science supports this kind of transdisciplinary research, and since 2015 now 14 real-world labs were founded and were supported by the Ministry, and that's why here we have a lot of experience,
03:02
and as well my real-world laboratory is situated in Baden-Württemberg in the northern Black Forest, and so I want to give you an insight into the experiences of this, with just some impressions.
03:20
Afterwards, based on these impressions, I want to ask you just to talk to your neighbors what you think seems to be characteristic for that kind of lab, so I don't start with a definition by myself. I just want that we create our own, discuss about it,
03:41
and I will later on explain as well why we will do it in that way. And of course I'm interested, since I know that during the whole week you deal with transdisciplinary research, so you may have some clear ideas in mind
04:00
what is transdisciplinary research, and real-world laboratories are part of transdisciplinary research, and so I hope in this group discussion we can find out what is special about this real world in comparison to normal transdisciplinary research.
04:21
And just then for relaxing, a small input from my side, so what did we find out, what are the challenges scientists are faced with, of course practitioners are faced with challenges as well, but you are more coming from the scientific side, you work in your PhD projects,
04:42
and what else are such typical attitudes scientists develop when they are faced with real-world laboratories. And then at the end, let's have a...
05:00
depends a little bit on the time frame, normally we said two hours, I don't know whether it's too much in the evening, we will see, so for the end, my idea was that it's very end when you listen a little bit to what is characteristic for real-world laboratories,
05:21
we make more kind of game, create your own lab, and I explain it now because maybe one or two of you can already think about it, we can choose in small groups some funny topics, so nobody has to have studied a specific topic
05:40
to be able to create a real-world laboratory, but if somebody of you says, oh, in my PhD topic, a real-world lab would fit too, then you could say, oh, I would make such a group and would ask others for input and we discuss how to create a real-world lab, especially in this topic.
06:03
Yeah, now some impressions, and I selected three different real-world labs from the federal state, Baden-Württemberg, two are big cities, Stuttgart and Karlsruhe, and one is the one I'm responsible for,
06:20
it's a rural area in northern Black Forest, so the first one, situated in Stuttgart, the topic is sustainable mobility, and for each of the three real-world labs, I will explain a little bit the background,
06:41
so what was the research question or what they dealt with and what was the role of science in it and if it was visible, what was the impact or is the impact. So their question was, when you have a look at Stuttgart,
07:01
it's a huge city with a lot of traffic problems, traffic jam, fine dust pollutions, and so their approach was to find ways to improve that situation, to find new approaches for sustainable mobility, and here you can see one of the first calls,
07:22
it's saying, we need you, so you see, this is done by scientists, but they directly address citizens by saying, we need you, do you want to change your mobility culture,
07:42
and by that, within that project, they created a lot of subgroups in a mixture of scientists, practitioners, civil society, a lot of NGOs were involved as well, so here, for instance, you can see such a funded organization
08:00
where they started to create cargo bikes to find other ways to carry heavy loads through the city. The next one, you can see here a street in Stuttgart, and this normally is a parklet, normally used by cars,
08:22
but they started an initiative to occupy parklets, it was allowed by the city administration, and to give them back as public space, to initiate discussions, to show that it's possible to use this space in another way,
08:42
and maybe you will ask yourself, what does it have to deal with science, it could be a local agenda group, but what's to do with science, so all these experiments, experiments are one of the main characteristics of real world laboratories,
09:01
because all these experiments they did, they were accompanied by research, so they tried to find out if we stimulate a debate on how to use public space, what do we achieve, how will it change the attitude of people in the city,
09:21
and so for instance these parklets, they led to a huge discussion, and it's the Beelzeitung of Stuttgart, how would you describe this German newsletter? It's... St. Paul's Press, St. Paul's Press.
09:40
Yeah, St. Paul's Press, yeah, and there they discussed whether it's fair or not to take such parklets and use it for such initiatives, and some people complained and said why science should deal with such topics, and isn't it wasted guilt by the Ministry of Science, but others said exactly that we stimulate such debate
10:02
and that people think about their mobility behaviour, this is exactly what we want to achieve with real world laboratories, to provoke, to initiate debates and to stimulate changes towards sustainability.
10:22
And it's a little bit, yeah, it's going in the same direction in Karlsruhe, there's a real world laboratory related to the Quartier Zukunft, they tried to enhance the sustainability of the city quarter, and as well with a similar initiative,
10:43
yes, the tomorrow, join the tomorrow or create the tomorrow, so it's again citizens, not citizens, scientists, who try to encourage and to empower citizen initiatives and accompany this social science or even with natural science or engineering science.
11:10
Or here it's very practical, it's a repair coffee, where people bring their old stuff and let it repair to use it again,
11:21
and this is a thing of course a local agenda group could manage, but here it was accompanied in the beginning by scientists, who again tried to stimulate new behaviours and to evaluate it afterwards. Or they, in German lessons, let us talk about energy,
11:44
so how could we change our energy energy to use within our city quarter. All these two real world laboratories, they continue their work,
12:04
and during the three years they were funded in the very beginning, they could establish networks and could create some impact, but of course it's a long term, it should be a long term process,
12:21
you can't influence behaviour just in one, two, three years. Now we jump into another surrounding, it's Northern Black Forest, so you could close your eyes, feel fresh air from the pines, and it's another setting where we work,
12:46
it's a real world laboratory I'm responsible for, and it's in Baden-Württemberg as well, here you have Freiburg, Baden-Baden, Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, where some of you will go on Saturday,
13:04
and our question was and is related to the national park region, so in 2014 the national park was created, there was a lot of opposition against this creation, and a group of scientists wondered how could we use this foundation
13:25
of the national park for research, and what can we learn from the ecological processes going on there, and how can we as scientists take part or contribute that all these opportunities which arise with national park
13:42
for sustainable development of the whole region, how these opportunities can really be used. So these have been the starting questions, and now again I only want to show pictures from the very beginning, and because it was as well crucial for,
14:01
or is crucial for a real world laboratory, but as well, I guess you talked about it already, transdisciplinary projects in general had to make co-design, so we had this general umbrella questions we wanted to research, then took interviews with state main stakeholders,
14:23
created some first research question, and with them we invited stakeholders to an event, and there we with them discussed our research question, and in some cases it really led to a complete shift of the research question,
14:44
so one team from the Echo Institute wanted to research on branding, on enterprises, sustainable enterprises, the feedback out of the region was at the moment we do not know, we do not need this, but we would need some work about mobility,
15:01
so they switched and created a team to work on mobility, so this event was crucial for us, and here you can see that in the end, citizens and stakeholders could select and evaluate topics and what they find especially important,
15:25
and so in the very end we had, and still have some of them, we had really different topics from health tourism to perception of wild animals, infrastructure, female entrepreneurs, silvicultural developments, a broad range of topic,
15:44
which came out of the region, out of interview results, out of discussion in an event, and of course the work went on and on, but this is just what I wanted to show you from these moments,
16:01
the moment impressions out of three real world laboratories, and now I would just like to go into discussion, maybe at first ask some questions at that point to me
16:23
before we go into some group discussion and some more interaction, but I guess these questions arise then during group discussion, so I gave you now not a definition and not the main characteristic of real world labs in an analytical way, but just some insights,
16:44
and I wanted to ask you to, just from these insights, to discuss with each other what seems to be characteristic for a real world lab from your point of view, and what seems to differ from normal transdisciplinary research,
17:00
what could be a special characteristic of a real world laboratory, and maybe while discussing you realize as well, oh, she didn't talk about this and that, and maybe she should afterwards we can go into discussion, and the suggestion would be just four people just join together
17:23
and make some just bubbling and talking a bit, and we will see whether we need ten minutes or more and then come together again. So you elaborated some of the main characteristics of real world laboratories,
17:40
and before highlighting them again, I have this sign there and to remember me that I want to tell you that this is now, the real world laboratories are now at a stage, at a very early stage, so maybe a few years ago they have been invented,
18:04
or the term of real world laboratory has been kind of invented, goes back to Uwe Schneiderwind, who is the chair of the Ruppertal Institute, who published quite a lot by using this term real world laboratories, and based on that a discussion among experts
18:25
upon scientists of transdisciplinary research started about what is real world laboratory, so I don't know what's your impression about it, but during this now almost four years I'm in this field, I realized there was a kind of battle of defining it,
18:44
so it's quite nice because always when you make your PhD, you start with literature, review and say oh, definition, definition, definition, and everything is fixed and clear, and then you start with your work, and here you start and oh, no definition, and so some started, so for instance Isoe Thomas-Jan,
19:07
he has another understanding of real world laboratories, and it is now the mainstream in the discussion, so he had the impression real world laboratories is just implementation of transdisciplinary research, maybe it changed now, but yeah, and some other scholars,
19:23
as I said, yeah, real world laboratory, it's just a kind of, yes, these are just agents for transformations, but it's not so much scientific work, and now during the last two or three years, scientists working in this real world laboratory
19:44
started to create definitions to define their own work, to say what is characteristic for the things we are doing, and now since two years, yeah, now you have more and more publications with definitions as well, but still there is some, yeah, everybody tries to show his flag,
20:04
real world laboratory is this or that, but what all have more or less in common are these six aspects, there is a claim for transformation, so with this real world laboratory,
20:21
you are not neutral scientists, but you have the aim of transforming something towards sustainability or towards something else, as well as struggle for people, as some scientists say, you can only use the term real world laboratory
20:42
when you dedicate your research towards sustainability. As I say, now we have to use this term in a broader context, we can also use it for car industry, and we can use it for technical development as well,
21:04
but yeah, so of course there should be a kind of transformation. I have a question or maybe more remark, in our group we discussed like how do you make the distinguishment of the definition real world experiment and real world laboratory,
21:24
I mean that's like one of those academic discussions I know, but we were trying to find like characteristics of real world laboratories, for example saying it's more this umbrella function, so you have a clearly defined geographical space,
21:41
and then you would have several experiments within that, that don't have to be interlinked, but hoping for synergies, so that would speed up hopefully the upscaling, so maybe we could talk a little bit more about the difference between real world lab and these experiments,
22:00
because I think that's interesting for clarification. Yeah it is, and my impression is that there is now a clarification, how to use these terms of the real world lab, it is focused on a special regional or local level, so it's an area, but it's as well mainly defined as a kind of infrastructure,
22:25
so with the real world lab you create a kind of institutional frame, where you have personnel capacities, where you have scientific infrastructure, and this should be long term oriented,
22:41
so you create a real world lab towards an umbrella topic, or an umbrella question, and within you start some experiments, so in our case some survey cultural experiments, and these can be short term oriented, and you can finish them after you got your results or your findings,
23:05
but still you use your real world lab and define new experiments, so this is how we use it, it's quite close to how you discussed it in your group.
23:25
Actors outside of academia, this we had already experiments, maybe the main difference to other transdisciplinary projects, working without experiments, and of course these experiments have to be accompanied by research, otherwise it would be just NGO activity,
23:51
and each real world lab feels dedicated to the transdisciplinary research mode, so all the methods you discussed during the week can be part of a real world lab,
24:03
and of course in each real world laboratory you have to make co-designs or define the questions together with other actors, co-production of results, co-dissemination, so this is the basic rule. What is quite accepted as well is that real world laboratories
24:26
aim at initiating learning processes within their own scientific, or their own community of the lab, but also within the societal surrounding, and so my impression was that I dealt with a lot of scientific projects,
24:46
or coordinated them, but I never had a project where we so much reflected on what we did, so whom we want to address, do we do it in the right way, how we should change our communication,
25:03
that it's understandable, so it has a lot of learning process or learning impacts for our scientific community as well, and this I really appreciate a lot. Could you please explain a bit the transferability,
25:24
because from the projects that I know I feel like they are very much connected to the specific city and case, like how to guarantee that and how to deal with it and how to abstract from the concrete case? That's the last point, that is a claim that a real world laboratory
25:45
should not only serve the small local area, because it is, all real world laboratories have a focus on a special area and that's why they are context related, and there are a lot of aspects which are not transferable,
26:03
and so when I look at the real world laboratory in Northern Back Forest, there are some scientific results we made transfer, which are related to how forests develop, how local knowledge is developing over decades,
26:22
but the main thing we can transfer is our knowledge about group processes and about how to move forward together with different stakeholders, so it's a lot of process knowledge.
26:41
So my impression is that in this term of transferability, all these different labs try to create common knowledge and transfer it via publications in the GAIA for instance, or a joint book on methods in real world laboratories,
27:02
so it's a methodological approach to transfer, and with the other aspects, that is a critical comment on real world laboratories, we have accompanying research made by the Basel team,
27:24
and they say with real world laboratories, you can really make good transformation processes on the local area, but it's not the right way if you want to change structures on a higher level, because you are too much involved with stakeholders on local level,
27:43
and local processes, and local innovations. At the moment, it would be an experiment to upscale the methodology of a real world laboratory
28:02
to other scales as well. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that is one. Sorry to interrupt. What do you say if people say, I don't want to be this object of your experiment,
28:22
I don't want to be the lab mouse for the scientists? We had exactly this question in the very beginning. Our project proposal had the title, Realabore not Schwarzwald, so the term Realabore was in the title,
28:41
and then in the first month, the website was already prepared, and then suddenly the administration of the National Park Administration, one of our practice partners said, oh, if you use these names, we will drop out, because we have enough problems to be accepted as National Park,
29:04
and we don't want the people to feel as animals. So it's not such a nice term to use it with citizens,
29:23
but my experience is the problem was more with the administration, who was afraid that the term could be perceived in that way, but in direct communication, it was never a problem.
29:43
And now we got accustomed to it, and people use it, and sometimes it gives us, maybe it's a little bit confusing term, but we had a lot of conflicts with the National Park Administration,
30:01
with some specific topics, but this term, Realabore, raises the expectations among all involved people, oh, we have to do something special, and we have to be something special. We don't know exactly what, but we have to do something different in our research, in our communication, our work,
30:23
and sometimes it was that we phoned and the other person, hmm, this didn't went well, hmm, but okay, we are Realabore, let's try again. So it's a label what gives you some space for experimentation.
30:41
But if somebody would find a nicer one, it would be fine as well. I have one more question. Where do you see the difference to the definition of action research or participatory action research? Because all these bullet points seem to me very familiar. Is there a difference, or is it just a rebranding?
31:05
It's, of course, now I'm a scholar of real world labs, and I have to say, oh no, of course we are, but it's based on the history of action research,
31:21
it's based on the history of participatory research, it's based on field, a special kind of field works, so a lot of aspects are related to action research, and it's a kind of rebranding, it is, I guess,
31:42
but I have now the impression that it's useful because it raises awareness, it raises attention, so I don't reject this kind of, also in scientific theoretical development you need such kind of rebranding,
32:01
and each time you add a small piece, and I think with action research you already try to bring together scientists, practitioners, with real world labs you emphasize experimental aspects a bit more,
32:20
so you bring more new small aspects into discussion, but it is based on the fundamental of action research and participatory research, and of course, maybe you have feared about all the other terms of labs,
32:44
sustainability living lab, transition, urban transition lab, transformation lab, so it's labbing everywhere, and each of these terms has some specific meanings,
33:01
so this is living labs, a lot of them are more focused on products, on services, and they control more what they are doing in their lab and allow not so much participation, transformation labs are more focusing on the whole system, system knowledge,
33:23
transition lab is more about empowering people, so with each term you shift a little bit the attention and the focus, and real world laboratory has not such a strong methodological focus,
33:41
or stakeholder focus, that's empowerment, or that it's a whole governance system, so from all the labs it's quite open, and this has disadvantages and advantages as well, but I think it's interesting also in the scientific area
34:02
to be aware of such developments and rebrandings, but use them as well if it helps to bring things forward, I would say.
34:25
I will have a look on the time frame, I think it's fine, so thanks for the discussion, it's always nice to get the question and to think about
34:40
what's the answer from the real world lab perspective, and I thought in between activities, maybe it's fine for you to collect now for ten minutes, I want to show you how our researchers, so the researchers from the Knowledge Dialogue Northern Black Forest,
35:01
how they dealt with this real world laboratory and how they struggled with some things as well, and I have to say that we were in the first three years between 20 and 30 scientists from very differing disciplines,
35:21
natural scientists, social scientists, and not all of them have been very convinced transdisciplinary scholars, a lot of them just wanted to get the money for funding and for their specific research, and okay, then we do a real world laboratory, let's see what it is, maybe we can just follow on what we did every time,
35:44
and then they thought, oh, we can't, we have to do something different, and I thought maybe it's interesting when you sometimes in the same role as scientists, and so the scientists' perspective, it's especially on the co-design phase
36:02
because this questionnaire, or this interview we did after this first phase which was the most ambitious phase as well, and I just let you know from where the results are, so it was an interview series, so we took 13 out of 20 active researchers
36:25
and we tried to represent all different disciplines, all different positions within, from prof to research associates, from junior researcher to senior researcher, from different institutions, university and non-university research institutions,
36:48
and the interviews were done by a student of sociology, so not by myself because it would have biased, and people don't have the feelings, they can't tell what have been the problems,
37:03
and this is a study made together especially with my colleague Michael Preganik and Georg Winkle as well, and now it's a slide which is a bit fuller than the last before because you have an idea what people are talking about,
37:21
I just want to give you an impression about what they are talking about, what was the process when they are complaining for instance, so we had a long, long co-design process, starting in the preparation phase with consultation of regional stakeholders and with formulation of first concrete research ideas,
37:45
so this already took three to four months, and then the project started, we got the funding, and prepared to this knowledge dialogue event I already mentioned
38:01
where people came together and discussed the research approach and redefined questions, so this took then a year later, it took place, and then afterwards there was a long process because we tried to be very transdisciplinary, very real-world laboratory,
38:23
to really take serious what stakeholders told us, so the follow-up of this event was that we had a scientific board which gave recommendations, then the research teams had to rework their proposals based on the recommendations of the stakeholders and of the scientific board,
38:43
and then we had a steering board which decided who of these different research teams will get how much funding, so the co-design process was related to the funding so that we can make sure that people really address questions which are needed in the region,
39:07
so all this took nine months, which is quite a lot, so normally you write a proposal then you get the yes or no, and if you get the yes then you start and you know what you want to do,
39:21
and here the researchers really had to be flexible to change the questions, which is especially for PhDs could be quite a little bit frustrating, and that was the basis about this process we asked in the interview,
39:43
so what do you think about such co-design in real-world laboratory, how did you feel, and so one aspect which came out was this development, this development of research-focused long process with unexpected results,
40:02
and some said it really helped us to open up our research agendas, made us listening to actors, experiment with new ideas, so some were open-minded, but as I said it was just a distraction from our own research, or it was frustrating that the rules of the game changed,
40:22
so this topic, this topic, do I get money, do I don't get, and I think it's typical for real-world laboratories, but also maybe for other transdisciplinary projects as well, you always have this tension between openness, between necessary flexibility,
40:42
but of course as well scientists need predictable procedures, and this was one aspect, the second one we had this kind of, we called it incentivized transdisciplinarity, so people only got money for funding when they moved,
41:00
when they reacted on the need of the region for special scientific results, so there was a kind of competition, it's usual to have it before a proposal is accepted, but not within a project, and here again some open-minded said it forced us to go for new topics,
41:25
experiment with new approaches, new corporations, and as I said we worked hard without having any planning security, and as well some mentioned that this could have disappointed as well regional stakeholders
41:41
who jumped in and tried to suggest something that was not selected afterwards, so you always have to think about management of expectations as well, so here again you have this tension between openness and planning security, and now in the second phase of the real world laboratory I tried to balance it in a way
42:04
that we move a little bit more to planning security, because we were a bit too open in the very beginning, and the involvement of stakeholders, so the impression was that we mainly included professionals and organized interests,
42:21
it was more difficult to include citizens, and some scientists said that we really had productive discussions with great input, as I said we just failed, we didn't reach a broader public, here we had the discussion that within a project we did not have an agreement
42:41
what is a good way of participation, and even after nine months we had different expectations, whether it would be good to address the whole public, or whether we should go more for experts or stakeholders, so this is also when you go for a disciplinary project
43:03
quite important to define it and to be in discussion within the project, and of course citizens would not have been able to contribute anyhow, so this tension between expert involvement and broad involvement,
43:22
and what we, I didn't mention it now by citations, but what we found in general is that the scientists, even those who are a little bit rejecting, they see the great challenge, or the great potential, but there are still a lot of challenges, so the classical logic of research, to make a PhD,
43:45
to publish in a special time, all this is quite difficult to combine it with real world laboratory, which needs a lot of time for communication, for addressing stakeholders,
44:01
and also the assessment of, like you said, is it new what we do in real world lab, some more applied, scientists which are more related to applied, so that's what we are doing for decades, or what have been done for decades, what's new with this real world laboratory,
44:21
and so we really found what this, Schneider went through and kind of invented this topic, he said for him it's mainly the power of irritation, and we really found that it worked within our universities, that it worked back not only towards society,
44:42
but also it was a kind of irritation among the scientists, which it's necessary to balance, it's not going to frustration, but it's going to be used productive and to develop science as well.
45:03
Yeah, that's what I wanted to tell you about challenges, just only with a look on scientists, of course one could talk about practitioners and a lot of different expectations, but I would like to leave it at that point. Are there questions or remarks, comments to that aspect?
45:30
It's hot here.