Abstract This chapter explores the complex and creative dimensions of transdisciplinary research within the UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES programme. It begins by discussing the nature of transdisciplinary approaches, emphasising the value of integrating diverse perspectives and collaborating across disciplinary boundaries. The second part shifts focus to a personal narrative, using a dream as a case study to delve deeper into alternative research methodologies. Indigenous perspectives view dreams as a powerful form of knowledge, offering insights into personal, collective and ancestral wisdom. My dream illustrates how research assumptions can be challenged and promotes a novel and critical reflection on the role of societal partners in research. Through telling this story, I highlight the importance of reflexivity and equity in deconstructing academic hierarchies and truly embracing co-design methods that incorporate alternative, often marginalised, perspectives as legitimate knowledge. By working with Indigenous knowledge systems, particularly with regard to the spiritual and cultural significance of dreams, this chapter advocates for the recognition of alternative methodologies in transdisciplinary research, emphasising their potential to broaden the scope of enquiry and deepening research relationships. By embracing these alternatives, the chapter calls for a more inclusive and creative approach to research that transcends conventional disciplinary silos, offering a new way of thinking about the relationship between research, society, and the production of knowledge.
Abstract I propose a method for linking archaeological or historical evidence with research on urban resilience today. The greatest harms from climate change—the most severe negative impacts on the greatest numbers of people—occur in cities, particularly cities in the Global South. How can archaeology and history contribute to this topic? I begin with the literature on contemporary urban adaptations to climate change, and highlight a list of twenty-one adaptation measures identified in the latest report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). I select four of these adaptation measures—water provisioning, food production, livelihoods, and housing—plus urban relocation, and illustrate some of the pertinent archaeological and historical research. I then describe four criteria for evaluating the long-term success of cities (persistence, resilience to shocks, growth, and prosperity), and discuss how these can be used to test or evaluate the five adaptation measures in the past. The final step in my proposed method—the coproduction of knowledge with urban sustainability scientists and policy makers to integrate these findings into broader scientific and policy realms—has yet to be carried out.
Abstract Despite its widespread use, the concept of sustainability is highly ambiguous, with multiple interpretations of its meaning. Among these, the ‘needs’ of the present and future remain largely undefined, a significant omission given highly unequal levels of consumption, past and present. Food systems and land use currently have a large environmental footprint; reducing the damage inherent in the current agro-industrial model can be informed by insights from the thousands of years of agrarian history studied by historians and archaeologists. Indeed, many past and present agricultural regimes have been held up as examples of sustainability. Too often, however, such claims are based primarily on temporal longevity without consideration of past power relations. Using data from multiple trajectories of agricultural change in southern India, I argue that even longstanding historical systems have tradeoffs and may be built on foundations of social inequality, suggesting that historical scholars pay close attention to diverse social and environmental effects of past lifeways.
Abstract This chapter discusses broader implications of the activities of the European Geoscience Union Biodiversity Task Force. Created in 2022 from volunteer members of the EGU as a science-for-policy initiative, the Task Force focused its efforts on advising different members and groups within the European Parliament in the context of the legislative process on the EU Nature Restoration Law. The chapter deals with the limitations, potential and challenges in scientists’ involvement in the legislative process in environmental and historical context.
Abstract This chapter offers perspectives on bridging academe and the public sector through 25 years of professional experience—15 in federal service and ten in higher education and the nonprofit sector. It argues that professionally trained historians can be well-suited to achieve such bridging by embracing their expertise while communicating and collaborating across disciplinary boundaries. Successful bridging depends upon being actionable, intentional, and strategic in one’s career trajectory. It also depends upon self-awareness, self-empowerment, and resilience; building, maintaining, and growing a network of trusted and mutually supportive colleagues; setting priorities and goals, and being flexible and open to the fact that opportunities to bridge academe and the public sector can arise by design and by chance. When they happen by design, be prepared to fail. When they happen by chance, be comfortable being uncomfortable taking an unfamiliar path. The journey can be deeply meaningful, and the destination can be a rewarding career through which one can be an impactful envoy for historical training and the history profession.
