Participatory Convergence: A framework for working with and for communities in the Anthropocene
Anais Delilah Roque, Dept. of Anthropology
Through different forums, scientists have expressed that to address the complex problems in the Anthropocene, such as climate change impacts, there is a need to rethink how science is done. In such search, many have moved from traditional scientific disciplinary research to multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, indigenous science, and decolonizing approaches, amongst others. Among these approaches, Convergence research seeks a pathway to breaking disciplinary silos around a compelling problem and increasing creativity and innovation as seen through co-creating new frameworks, methods, and plausible solutions. While Convergence research aims to increase innovation and creativity through co-production and co-learning, less has been discussed about the role of stakeholders or those directly impacted by these compelling problems in a convergence research agenda. Acknowledging the challenges that can come from top-down and reductionist methodologies, in this lecture I present a framework to engage in convergence research, including stakeholders from the study site. My team argues that a framework bridging participatory approaches and convergence research brings an opportunity to support novelty, creativity, and more policy-relevant outcomes while facilitating the co-development of research agendas, trust, methods and enhancing understandings and possible solutions to the phenomenon studied. We bring our experiences from an ongoing convergence collaboration, the Action for Water Equity Consortium on social and physical infrastructures for water security in U.S. Colonias communities in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands.
