Theme: Transformative Partnerships For A Better World
The sweeping transformations needed to make progress towards sustainability require actors to work in partnership. The importance of partnerships is recognized in the final United Nations Sustainable Development Goal – Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
While partnerships are essential to tackle global sustainability challenges, forming and maintaining effective partnerships for transformation is challenging. Actors bring different worldviews, knowledge practices, goals, and narratives to partnerships. They may also enter partnership from very different positions of power. When building partnerships, there are risks of tokenism and colonization.
The Transformations Conference 2023 will explore the role of partnerships in transformative practice. It will look for ways to build partnerships that are more effective, inclusive and transformative. Questions of particular interest include:
How can we co-design processes and co-produce knowledge for sustainability transformations in ways that reflect our collective vision for a sustainable future?
What practices, narratives and structures characterize the most effective transformative partnerships? How does this change with scale, from local place-based engagements to global networks?
What can transformations researchers and practitioners learn from Decoloniality and Indigenous philosophy and practice? How can we decolonize partnerships?
How does diversity of knowledges, perspectives, cultures, disciplines, and narratives contribute to sustainability transformations? How can we build coalitions that respect such diversity, while developing the unified power to deliver purposive sustainability transformations?
How can we build inclusive communities of practice that support transformations researchers and practitioners to be more effective together?
What does leadership mean in the context of partnership? What capacities are needed to lead transformative partnerships?
How should we evaluate partnerships? What makes a partnership transformative
What capacities do researchers and practitioners need to cultivate to be ‘good partners’?
Sub-Themes
Transformative Policy, Institutions And Organizations
Governance for transformation, institutional arrangements, organisational structure and form, how to engage diverse communities in policy making, how to work over multiple scales, transformative enterprise, diversity and inclusion, design.
How can policy and decision-making processes support transformative outcomes? How is transformation governed?
What institutional arrangements support transformative outcomes? How do rules and norms support transformation?
What organizational structures are appropriate to engage diverse kinds of communities and address different kinds of transformations challenges?
What structures characterise the most effective transformative partnerships? How does this change with scale, from local place-based engagements to global networks?
How can we build inclusive communities of practice that support transformations researchers and practitioners to be more effective together?
How can we address power imbalances and manage risks in designing and maintaining equitable partnerships?
Transformative Paradigms And Practices
Engaging teams & communities, co-design, collective visioning, decolonisation, arts and creative practice, transformative practices and narratives.
What are the most effective techniques and processes to engage teams and communities in transformation?
How can we co-design processes for sustainability transformations in ways that reflect our collective vision for a sustainable future?
How can we decolonise partnerships?
What is the role of arts and creativity in transformation?
How can we work with narratives to support transformation?
What practices and narratives characterise the most effective transformative partnerships? How does this change with scale, from local place-based engagements to global networks?
Transformative Leadership
What skills & capacities and awareness are needed for transformative leadership in diverse settings?
What does leadership mean in the context of partnership?
How does diversity of knowledges, perspectives, cultures, disciplines, and narratives contribute to sustainability transformations?
How can we build coalitions that respect such diversity, while developing the unified power to deliver purposive sustainability transformations?
Transformative Learning & Knowledge Practices
Decolonial & indigenous practices, knowledge co-production, capacity building, learning practices and partnerships, decision-making.
How can we engage in the co-production of knowledge, identity, and the social order?
How can we support knowledge production and decision-making that values multiple ways of knowing, particularly Indigenous and Southern knowledge practices?
How are we building capabilities of future change-makers? What role is higher education playing in fostering mutual learning for transformation, including student-staff partnerships, and learning partnerships with industry, government and community?
How are we learning with non-human others, from bees, to rivers to AI? What new learning partnerships, beyond human-centred relations and intelligences, are we making to support transformation for more regenerative futures?
What transformations are needed for equitable knowledge practices in terms of access to knowledge, co-creation, decision-making?
Transformative Innovations
Innovating for transformation, supporting innovation, novel technologies, economic instruments and socio-cultural practices.
What role does innovation play in achieving transformation?
How do we support innovation for transformation?
What novel technologies, economic instruments, and socio-cultural practices are emerging that could support transformation?
Evaluating & Assessing Transformation
Outcomes, impacts, effectiveness of partnerships, & developmental evaluation.
How to evaluate transformations processes and outcomes/impacts?
How should we evaluate the effectiveness of partnerships?
What characteristics of partnerships help them to deliver transformation?
Inner Transformation & Wellbeing
How can we cultivate individual wellbeing to support inner transformations and embody new systems?
What capacities do researchers and practitioners need to cultivate to be ‘good partners’?
How does the wellbeing of individual participants affect the wellbeing of their wider systems?
How do we decolonise our own thinking?
Just Transformations
How can we ensure that processes of transformation deliver just outcomes?
Is there a ‘dark side’ to transformation and how can we guard against it?
How can transformative change be decolonialized?
Who decides when and how transformation takes place?
How do we resolve tensions between transformation as a planetary necessity and the potential for negative impacts on particular people, communities and organisations?