‘Publish or Perish’ the expression goes.
Publications in prestigious academic journals are vital to a researcher’s career success. Researchers are typically measured by the number of papers they publish and the number of citations their work receives. This approach often leaves little room for other types of research outputs, and research impact is often thought of as something that occurs after the research has been carried out.
A recent movement of activist academics and problem-focused researchers is pushing back on these narrow views of research impact by collaborating with non-academic partners to address societal challenges. This includes Dr Zoe Malcolm, Lecturer in Sustainable Development, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh.
Zoe has been inspired by challenging the basis of traditional ways of thinking to imagine innovative solutions for more just and sustainable futures. She became a researcher because ”it felt like somewhere I could make a difference.”
For her, this is about working directly with communities, especially those who have traditionally been excluded from research or whose voices are often marginalised in mainstream solutions to sustainability challenges.
Co-creating solutions: How participatory research drives sustainability
Extractive and colonial approaches have been common in research, which give little back to communities and can worsen pre-existing inequalities when local cultures are ignored. This experience was reflected to Zoe by rural communities of the Highlands of Scotland where she conducted her PhD research about the Wester Ross UNESCO Biosphere. She heard how communities often participate in research but never see the results, nor directly benefit from the projects.
This reinforced to her the importance of adopting a participatory approach to research with the Wester Ross UNESCO Biosphere, a volunteer initiative pursuing sustainable regional development. Part of the Biosphere ethos is acknowledging that people in the Highlands of Scotland have long-managed landscapes and hold valuable local ecological knowledge. Wester Ross is unique for a biosphere reserve because it is entirely community-led.
Empowering local communities through research
What attracted Zoe to study the Wester Ross Biosphere was its emphasis on nourishing the interconnections between people and nature to create a sustainable place for local communities whilst addressing global sustainability challenges. During her PhD, Zoe pursued an ethnographic approach to embed herself in the operations of the Biosphere and work with local communities. Whilst pursuing her PhD research questions, as a volunteer, she was also actively supporting the core aims of the organisation: biodiversity conservation, education and research, and sustainable development. Zoe’s approach enabled her to provide support in many forms from IT and research support to delivering projects and applying for funding. These activities went some way to give back to the Biosphere and its communities and help pursue sustainable development.
Zoe organised and hosted a series of sustainable development webinars on topics such as local food, green jobs, traditional skills, and partnership approaches to land management. These online events helped to share local knowledge across disparate rural communities and generate ideas for novel solutions to regional and global challenges.
Climate change is a priority area for the Biosphere but the region is often neglected as a scale of action for climate solutions and the organisation has struggled to find funding to address it. Zoe brought additional capacity to focus on this challenge through funding from the National Heritage Lottery Fund.
“We need big solutions to big problems, and we asked ourselves how we can create a Wester Ross regional solution for climate change?”
She helped design an online event as a much-needed platform for communities to celebrate and share their actions to mitigate climate change in culturally specific and place-based ways. This included the role of crofting as climate-friendly agriculture and provider of local food, as well as considering issues such as marine carbon, energy production and regional transport challenges. Participants at the event helped to identify priorities for future Biosphere projects and research.
Researchers often have the ability and skillset to support communities to achieve their goals, and Zoe offered this openly to the Biosphere, bringing her ideas to support further action. Gaelic language, for instance, is another priority area for the Biosphere given its cultural importance and the significant local ecological knowledge it holds. With slow progress made on the issue, Zoe helped the Biosphere successfully apply for a Gaelic Development Officer role supported by Bòrd na Gàidhlig. This led to collaborations with NatureScot and the National Trust for Scotland to research the significance of Gaelic place names in landscapes across Wester Ross.
Blurring personal principles with research interests
Zoe’s work with the Biosphere blended her activist principles with her research interests. Inspired by anarchist ideas about ‘prefiguration’—the means of doing something leading to the ends—she wanted to write about how a community-led Biosphere can pursue more just and sustainable futures and help create those futures in practice.
As an advocate for the Wester Ross Biosphere, she recognises:
“The Wester Ross Biosphere is a model for overcoming many of the current challenges in sustainability theory and practice; the lack of integration between nature and culture, siloed thinking, and a lack of capacity within local communities to self-determine more just and sustainable futures.”
She continues to volunteer for the Biosphere and plans to seek future funding to bring more resources and capacity to sustainability transitions the region. While Zoe feels her approach to blending activism and academia has contributed to the organisation by creating space for collective action, she recognises the struggles they continue to face:
“The current funding and policy landscape is not supportive of this community-led model, which is not prioritised in core public funding. Added barriers to action include the concentrated patterns of private land ownership in the region, in which communities have little power to address unsustainable land uses.”
Additionally, there are challenges from the researcher’s perspective. It is not always easy to measure and evaluate the impacts of activism in traditional academic models. Moreover, university funding and administrative systems can limit the collaborative possibilities for researchers looking to co-create work with communities.
Zoe’s work and career trajectory is just one example of how researchers can address sustainability challenges through research and in their personal lives. A collaborative approach can help broadening our ideas of research impacts beyond publication to empower communities and create meaningful change. As Zoe continues to support the Wester Ross Biosphere and seeks new opportunities to enhance sustainable transitions, her work serves as a compelling example of how academia can evolve to address the pressing challenges of our time.
