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ARTICLE
Neither right nor wrong? Ethics of collaboration in
transformative research for sustainable futures
Julia M. Wittmayer 1,2 ✉, Ying-Syuan (Elaine) Huang3, Kristina Bogner 4, Evan Boyle5, Katharina Hölscher6,
Timo von Wirth2,7, Tessa Boumans2, Jilde Garst8, Yogi Hale Hendlin9, Mariangela Lavanga 10, Derk Loorbach1,
Neha Mungekar 1,2, Mapula Tshangela11, Pieter Vandekerckhove12 & Ana Vasques13
Transformative research is a broad and loosely connected family of research disciplines and
approaches, with the explicit normative ambition to fundamentally question the status quo,
change the dominant structures, and support just sustainability transitions by working colla-
boratively with society. When engaging in such science-practice collaborations for transformative
change in society, researchers experience ethical dilemmas. Amongst others, they must decide,
what is worthwhile to be researched, whose reality is privileged, and whose knowledge is
included. Yet, current institutionalised ethical standards, which largely follow the tradition of
medical ethics, are insufficient to guide transformative researchers in navigating such dilemmas.
In addressing this vacuum, the research community has started to develop peer guidance on
what constitutes morally good behaviour. These formal and informal guidelines offer a repertoire
to explain and justify positions and decisions. However, they are only helpful when they have
become a part of researchers’practical knowledge ‘in situ’. By focusing on situated research
practices, the article addresses the need to develop an attitude of leaning into the uncertainty
around what morally good behaviour constitutes. It also highlights the significance of combining
this attitude with a critical reflexive practice both individually and collaboratively for answering
questions around ‘how to’as well as ‘what is the right thing to do’. Using a collaborative
autoethnographic approach, the authors of this paper share their own ethical dilemmas in doing
transformative research, discuss those, and relate them to a practical heuristic encompassing
axiological, ontological, and epistemological considerations. The aim is to support building
practical wisdom for the broader research community about how to navigate ethical questions
arising in transformative research practice.
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03178-z OPEN
1DRIFT, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 2Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 3Faculty of Education, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. 4Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Faculty of
Geosciences, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands. 5MaREI Centre for Energy Climate and Marine, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
6Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Geosciences, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands. 7Research Lab for Urban
Transport (ReLUT), Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. 8Business Management & Organisation Group, Wageningen
University, Wageningen, The Netherlands. 9Erasmus School of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 10 Erasmus School of
History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. 11 Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
12 Delft Centre for Entrepreneurship, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. 13 Erasmus University College Erasmus University Rotterdam,
Rotterdam, The Netherlands. ✉email: wittmayer@drift.eur.nl
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Introduction
There is a growing recognition that current research has
failed to adequately address persistent societal challenges,
which are complex, uncertain, and evaluative in nature
(Ferraro et al., 2015; Loorbach et al., 2017; Saltelli et al., 2016).
Along with this recognition come calls for science to help address
these increasingly urgent and complex challenges faced at a global
and local level, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, or social
inequalities (Future Earth, 2014; Parks et al., 2019; WBGU, 2011).
This call is echoed from within academia (Bradbury et al., 2019;
Fazey et al., 2018; Norström et al., 2020) and has also translated
into corresponding research funding (Arnott et al., 2020; Gerber
et al., 2020; Vermeer et al., 2020). The fundamental premise is
that addressing complex societal challenges requires more than
disciplinary knowledge alone and extends beyond the confines of
academia (Gibbons et al., 1994; Hirsch Hadorn et al., 2008; Lang
et al., 2012). That is, addressing them necessitates interactive
knowledge co-production and social learning with societal actors
to produce actionable and contextually embedded knowledge for
societal transformations (Chambers et al., 2021; Hessels et al.,
2009; Schäpke et al., 2018). This trend has prompted a (re)surge
of socially engaged approaches to research, including transdisci-
plinary research, phronetic social sciences, participatory research,
action- and impact-oriented research, and transformative
research. These approaches involve collaboration between aca-
demics and various societal stakeholders, such as policymakers,
communities, enterprises, and civil society organisations.
However, often, such socially engaged research approaches are
at odds with the institutional traditions designed for mono-
disciplinary knowledge production. Transformative research, for
instance, does not claim an objective observer position; instead, it
explicitly embraces a normative orientation. Its goal, as many
have argued, is to facilitate transformative societal change towards
justice and sustainability by recognising and addressing the deep
and persistent socio-ecological challenges inherent in our current
society (Mertens, 2007; Wittmayer et al., 2021). This motive to
transform existing systems through collaborative research, in our
view, obliges researchers to be more critical and vigilant in their
decisions (Fazey et al., 2018). As we will present later in this
paper, many of these decisions constitute ethical dilemmas, such
as who decides what ‘good’research is, whose knowledge to
prioritise, or who should engage and under which circumstances.
These ethical dilemmas are only poorly addressed by the ethical
review processes in place at most universities, which remain
dominated by linear and positivist framings of knowledge pro-
duction and research design (Wood and Kahts-Kramer, 2023).
Consequently, transformative researchers are often left struggling
to choose “between doing good (being ethically responsive to the
people being researched) and doing good research (maintaining
pre-approved protocols)”(Macleod et al., 2018, p. 10). The
translation of the values and principles of transformative research
into formal and informal ethical guidelines is only starting
(Caniglia et al., 2023; Fazey et al., 2018; West and Schill, 2022).
Confronting these ethical dilemmas calls for greater reflexivity
and dialogue with ourselves, among researchers, between
researchers and their collaborators (including funders and pro-
fessionals), and between researchers and the institutions within
which they operate (Finlay, 2002; Horcea-Milcu et al., 2022;
Pearce et al., 2022). Attesting to this call, the authors of this paper
engaged in a ‘collaborative autoethnography’(Lapadat, 2017;
Miyahara & Fukao, 2022; Phillips et al., 2022) to explore the
following research question: Which ethical dilemmas do
researchers face in research collaborations that seek to catalyse
transformations? And how do they navigate these in their colla-
borative practice? Thus, as an interdisciplinary group of
researchers affiliated with academic research institutes, we shared,
compared, and discussed our experiences concerning ethical
dilemmas in our transformative research endeavours. In these
discussions, we considered our interactions, engagements, and
relationships with collaborators along with how institutional rules
and norms influence or constrain our practices and relations.
This paper begins with an overview of transformative research
and the challenges that arise when working collaboratively. It also
testifies to the formal and informal attempts to support
researchers in navigating those challenges (“Ethics in transfor-
mative research”). From there, we develop the argument that
formal or informal guidelines are most meaningful when they
have become a part of the practical wisdom of researchers. When
they are, they support researchers in leaning into the uncertainty
of what constitutes morally good behaviour and in navigating
collaboration ‘in situ’. Inspired by Mertens (2017), we relate our
own dilemmas to the three philosophical commitments that
comprise a research paradigm: axiology, ontology, and episte-
mology (“Transformative research practice investigated through
collaborative autoethnography”, also for an elaboration of the
terms). We share concrete dilemmas while embedding and
relating them to a broader body of knowledge around similar
dilemmas and questions (“Collaboration in transformative
research practice”). We close the paper by pointing to the
importance of bottom-up ethics and the need to embed those into
revalued and redesigned ethical standards, processes, and
assessments that can provide external guidance and account-
ability (“Concluding thoughts”).
Ethics in transformative research
In this section, we first introduce transformative research (TR) in
terms of its underlying values and its ontological and epistemo-
logical premises (Mertens, 2007,2017)(“Introducing transfor-
mative research”). We then connect it to its institutional context,
where ethical standards and procedures fit the linear production
of knowledge, leading to tensions with TR practices (“Institu-
tional context: Formal ethical standards and processes”). Finally,
we outline how the research community tries to address this
misfit and the felt need for understanding what constitutes
morally ‘right’behaviour by providing peer guidance on the
ethical conduct of TR (“Peer context: Informal heuristics for
transformative research”).
Introducing transformative research. TR refers to a broad and
loosely connected family of research disciplines and approaches,
with the explicit normative ambition to fundamentally question
the status quo, change the dominant structures, and support just
sustainability transitions (Hölscher et al., 2021; Jaeger-Erben
et al., 2018; Mertens, 2021; Schneidewind et al., 2016; Wittmayer
et al., 2021). Transformative researchers thus start from the basic
premise that “all researchers are essentially interveners”(Fazey
et al., 2018, p. 63). Consequently, they are explicit about the kind
of normative orientation of their interventions to further a social
justice and environmental sustainability agenda. There is no
denying the fact that such research approaches can also be used
with a different normative mindset and value orientation, which
will have other ethical consequences.
TR builds on methodological and theoretical pluralism that
knits together kindred, or even conflicting, perspectives to
complement disciplinary specialism (Hoffmann et al., 2017;
Horcea-Milcu et al., 2022; Midgley, 2011). As such, it also comes
as a diverse phenomenon, and where such diversity is “not
haphazard […] we must be cautious about developing all-
embracing standards to differentiate the ‘good’from the ‘bad’”
(Cassell and Johnson, 2006, p. 783). Such an ontological stance
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involves letting go of the idea of absolute truth and the need to
tightly control the research process and outcomes (van Breda and
Swilling, 2019). Instead, TR encourages continuous societal
learning to generate actionable knowledge and transformative
action that manifests in real-world changes in behaviours, values,
institutions, etc. (Bartels and Wittmayer, 2018; Hölscher et al.,
2021). In doing so, TR is often based upon pragmatist
assumptions about the ways knowledge and action inform one
another, generating contingent knowledge in a process of action
and experimentation (Harney et al., 2016; Popa et al., 2015). The
research process serves as a means to assess ideas in practical
application, blending a critical realist stance on socially
constructed reality with acknowledging subjectivism and the
existence of multiple realities (Cassell and Johnson, 2006).
TR also represents an epistemological shift from the notion of
the distanced, presumably unbiased, and all-knowing researcher
and recognises individuals as sense-makers, agency holders, and
change agents (Horcea-Milcu et al., 2022; Hurtado, 2022).
Collaboration enables the elicitation of different kinds of
knowledge, including scientific knowledge across disciplines as
well as phronetic and tacit knowledge from practice. It aims at
capturing the plurality of knowing and doing that is relevant to
specific contexts and actors (Frantzeskaki and Kabisch, 2016;
Nugroho et al., 2018; Pohl, 2008). This sort of mutual social
learning supports joint sense-making and experimental processes.
These then invite us to rethink existing situations, (re)define
desired futures, and (re)position short-term action (Fazey et al.,
2018; Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2016; Schneider et al., 2019). The co-
creation of knowledge and action can increase ownership,
legitimacy, and accountability and can help facilitate trust-
building among diverse societal groups (Hessels et al., 2009; Lang
et al., 2012). The latter is an essential ingredient for tackling
complex societal problems during times of discrediting science
and the rise of populist, antidemocratic movements (Saltelli et al.,
2016).
Institutional context: formal ethical standards and processes.
The institutional environment is challenging for researchers enga-
ging in TR for multiple reasons; one challenge is the formal ethical
standards and processes. Current approaches to ethical assessment
in social science emerged from several international conventions in
the field of medical ethics (BMJ, 1996; General Assembly of the
World Medical Association, 2014; National Commission for the
Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical, & Behavioural
Research, 1979). Most formal research ethics reviews adopt the four
principles of Beauchamp and Childress (2001), which include: (1)
non-maleficence by attempting to not harm others; (2) respect for
autonomy by attempting to provide information about the research
that allows decisions to be taken; (3) beneficence by attempting to
achieve useful outcomes outweighing the risks of participation; and
(4) justice by attempting fairness in participation and distribution of
benefits. These principles have found their way into formal ethical
reviews, often practicing value-neutral and utilitarian ethics. This
approach is debatable for TR approaches (Detardo-Bora, 2004)and
seems more effective at protecting research institutions (fore-
grounding bureaucratically controllable compliance) than research
participants (Christians, 2005). Indeed, many engaged in TR have
raised concerns that neither these principles nor their formal
translation account for the particularity, situatedness, epistemic
responsibilities, and relationality that are key to the conduct and
ethics of TR (Cockburn and Cundill, 2018;Lincoln,2001;Parsell
et al., 2014; Wijsman and Feagan, 2019). In the following para-
graphs, we highlight several tensions between the understanding of
research, as it informs many ethical standards in place, and an
understanding of TR.
First, a pre-defined versus an emerging research design. Due to
its real-world orientation, TR needs to be able to deal flexibly with
changing contexts and windows of opportunity that might arise
(Hurtado, 2022). Due to the relationality of TR, it requires
ongoing interaction and negotiation between researchers and
their collaborators (Bartels and Wittmayer, 2018; Bournot-Trites
and Belanger, 2005; Williamson and Prosser, 2002). One-off
general consent at the start (e.g., through informed consent
forms), as is common for ethical review processes, is thus at odds
with the emergent design of TR and is also argued to be
insufficient in maintaining participants’autonomy (Smith, 2008).
As an alternative, Locke et al. (2013) posit that informed consent
should be seen as a collective, negotiated, continuous process,
especially in collaborative action research.
Second, assumed neutrality versus dynamic aspects of
researchers’positionalities. Ethical review protocols are geared
towards upholding the objective position of researchers as
outsiders in the investigated context, ensuring that they will not
influence this research context in any way. However, TR
explicates its ambition to influence real-world problems through
engagement, acknowledging that research needs to confront
existing hegemonic orders and emancipate those involved
through a democratic process (Cassell and Johnson, 2006).
Furthermore, researchers co-design, facilitate, and participate in
the process of knowledge co-production, making them also
participants and subjects of their own research (Janes, 2016). To
enhance the validity and integrity of the research, Wood, and
Kahts-Kramer (2023), among others, suggest that transformative
researchers explicitly state their positionality. This involves
reflecting on their assumptions, values, and worldviews.
Third, the primacy of knowledge generation versus the
importance of action. Ethical review protocols, given their
historical roots in medical practice, assume that the act of
falsifying, generating, or improving theories alone would benefit
participants, collaborators, and the public at large. Yet, research-
ers engaged in TR take a step further, seeking to develop both
scientific and actionable knowledge in a way that addresses
persistent societal problems and stimulates social change (Bartels
and Wittmayer, 2018; Caniglia et al., 2021; Greenwood and Levin,
2007). As put by Wood and Kahts-Kramer (2023, p. 7), “the
ethical imperative of participatory research is to bring about
positive change and generate theory from reflection on the
purposeful action”. This approach strengthens the responsiveness
of research to societal and political needs (Stilgoe et al., 2013).
Transformative researchers thus perceive a lack of utility and
guidance from ethical standards and processes in place that have
institutionalised a certain understanding of research and related
sets of principles. Following Clouser and Gert (1990), one might
question whether such institutionalisation of a moral conscious-
ness is possible in the first place. They argue that so-called
‘principlism,’“the practice of using ‘principles’to replace both
moral theory and particular moral rules and ideals in dealing with
the moral problems that arise in medical practice”(Clouser and
Gert, 1990, p. 219), has reduced the much-needed debates on
morality vis-à-vis research and results in inconsistent and
ambiguous directives for morally ‘right’action in practice. In
response to the vacuum left by institutionalised ethics standards
and processes and the perceived necessity of defining morally
‘right’behaviour, the research community is turning inward to
develop peer guidance on ethical conduct in TR. The subsequent
section highlights several contributions to this endeavour.
Peer context: Informal heuristics for transformative research.
Transformative researchers have started offering general princi-
ples or frameworks as informal heuristics for what constitutes
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‘ethical’TR. Caniglia et al. (2023), for example, argue that prac-
tical wisdom can serve as a moral compass in complex knowledge
co-production contexts, and propose four central ‘wills’for
researchers to follow: committing to justice, embracing care,
fostering humility, and developing courage. Under the framing of
post-normal or Mode-2 science (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1994;
Gibbons et al., 1994; Nowotny et al., 2003), Fazey et al. (2018)
present ten ‘essentials’of action-oriented research on trans-
forming energy systems and climate change research
1
. One of
these essentials highlights that, as researchers, we intervene, and
that failing to acknowledge and engage with this reality opens the
doors to sustaining unjust power relations or positioning science
as apolitical. To address this, they echo Lacey et al.’s(2015,p.
201) assertion that such acknowledgment means “be[ing] trans-
parent and accountable about the choices made about what science
is undertaken, and how it is funded and communicated”.
Looking beyond sustainability scholarship, other researchers
have also developed practical actions or strategies for enhancing
their ethical behaviours in the research collaboration. Taking the
unique attributes of community-based participatory research,
Kwan and Walsh (2018, p. 382) emphasise a “focus on equity
rather than equality”and on practicing a constructive or
generative use of power “rather than adopting a power neutral
or averse position”. Others provide guiding questions to think
about the forms and quality of relationships between researchers
and participants (Rowan, 2000) and to support the navigation of
the relationship between action research and other participants
(Williamson and Prosser, 2002). Such questions should cover not
only process-focused questions but also the risks and benefits of
the intended outcomes, as well as questions around purpose,
motivation, and directionalities (Stilgoe et al., 2013). Others also
propose broader guidelines in which they pay attention to non-
Western and non-human-centred virtue ethics, such as ‘Ubuntu’
(I am because we are) (Chilisa, 2020). In forwarding climate
change as a product of colonisation, Gram-Hanssen et al. (2022)
join Donald’s(2012) call for an ethical relationality and reiterate
the need to ground all transformation efforts on a continuous
process of embodying ‘right relations’(see also Chilisa, 2020;
Wilson, 2020).
Yet, as argued before, ethics in collaboration cannot be
approached through developing principles and strategies alone.
Not only might they not be at hand or on top of one’s mind when
being immersed in a collaborative practice, which often requires a
certain reaction on the spot. They also cannot or should not
replace the quest for what morality means within that collabora-
tion (cf. Clouser and Gert, 1990). Further questions have been
prompted about the necessary skillsets for realising ethical
principles in practice (Jaeger-Erben et al., 2018; Pearce et al.,
2022; West and Schill, 2022). Caniglia et al. (2023), for example,
propose that researchers need skills such as dealing with plural
values with agility and traversing principles and situations with
discernment. Others focus on competency building among
research participants (Menon and Hartz-Karp, 2023). The
subsequent section turns to the point of supporting researchers
in navigating collaboration ‘in situ’and in leaning into the
uncertainty around what morally good behaviour constitutes—in
concrete TR contexts that are plural and uncertain.
Transformative research practice investigated through
collaborative autoethnography
Transformative research as a situated practice. The aforemen-
tioned institutionalised ethical standards and procedures, as well
as the informal peer heuristics, are two vantage points for gui-
dance on what constitutes morally good behaviour for transfor-
mative researchers. These existing vantage points are either
developed based on theoretical and philosophical framings or
based on researchers’actual experiences of doing TR. They do
offer a repertoire to explain and justify positions and decisions in
ethical dilemmas during research collaborations. However, it is
not until such heuristics or principles have become part of the
practical knowledge of researchers that they are useful for actual
TR in situ.
Considering research more as a practice situates it as a social
activity in a ‘real-world context’. In such a practice, researchers
often make decisions on the spot. Moreover, due to the
constraints posed by available time and resources, researchers
often engage in what Greenwood and Levin (2007, p. 130) term
“skilful improvisation”or “pragmatic concessions”(Greenwood
and Levin, 2007, p. 85). This “improvisational quality”(Yanow,
2006, p. 70) of the research process does not mean it is not carried
out systematically. Such systematicity is based on “action
repertoires”(Yanow, 2006, p. 71) that researchers creatively use
and remake (Malkki, 2007). This improvisation is thus neither
spontaneous nor random; rather, it builds on and is based on the
practical knowledge of researchers (formed through their
experiences and their situatedness) guiding their behaviours in
normatively complex situations. Using ‘organic design’(Haapala
et al., 2016), the researchers blend real-world settings into formal
spaces, fostering bricolage and driving sustainable institutional
evolution over time. Such practical knowledge includes “both
‘know how’knowledge (techne), […] and ethical and political-
practical knowledge (phronesis)”(Fazey et al., 2018, p. 61).
Research can thus be considered a craft (Wittmayer, 2016): the
skilful mastery of which develops over time through learning
based on experience and reflection (Kolb, 1984).
Such experiential learning should go beyond reflecting on what
lies in view to include seeing how attributes of the viewer shape
what is being viewed (cf. Stirling, 2006). Engaging in TR includes
being one’s own research instrument, which puts a researcher’s
positionality, i.e., their social, cultural, and political locations,
centre stage. It reminds us that researchers are “located within
networks of power and participate in the (re)configuration of
power relations”(Wijsman and Feagan, 2019, p. 74). This
positionality, the sum of what makes a person and how this
informs their actions (Haraway, 1988; Kwan and Walsh, 2018;
Marguin et al., 2021), is increasingly being acknowledged in
academia. It has a long history in feminist theories, participatory
action research, and the critical pedagogy of decolonisation.
Positionality refers to the “researcher’s self-understanding and
social vision”(Coghlan and Shani, 2005, p. 539) as well as their
motivation to ‘better society’(Boyle et al., 2023; Kump et al.,
2023) and how these affect how researchers interpret ethical
guidelines, conduct research, interpret data, and present findings.
Consequently, one’s positionality can make certain research
choices seem unethical. Mertens (2021, p. 2), for example,
considers “continuing to do research in a business-as-usual
manner”unethical as it makes the researcher “complicit in
sustaining oppression”.
Acknowledging one’s positionality and normative role is part
of a broader reflexive practice of critically questioning, reflecting
on, and being transparent about values, as well as taking
responsibility and accountability for research processes and
outcomes (Fazey et al., 2018; Pearce et al., 2022; Wijsman and
Feagan, 2019). Such a reflexive practice can support individual
researchers to act ethically, but more so, to improve our collective
ways of being and doing (i.e., an ethically informed research
community) by constantly connecting what should be (i.e., the
guidelines) and how it has been done (i.e., the practices) through
critical reflexive practices. This improvement at the collective
level includes a re-valuation and redesign of existing processes
and guidelines for morally good research.
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A collaborative autoethnography.Respondingtothisneedfor
critical reflexivity, we engaged with our storied experience in
navigating concrete and immediate ethical dilemmas that we have
encountered when collaborating with others for TR in practice. We
did so through collaborative autoethnography, a multivocal
approach in which two or more researchers work together to share
personal stories and interpret the pooled autoethnographic data
(Chang et al., 2016; Lapadat, 2017; Miyahara and Fukao, 2022).
Collaborative autoethnography is appropriate for our inquiry as it
broadens the gaze from the dilemmas of the self to locate them
within categories of experience shared by many. Interrogating our
personal narratives and understanding the shared experiences
through multiple lenses not only facilitates a more rigorous,
polyvocal analysis but also reveals possibilities for practical action
or intervention (Lapadat, 2017). Collaborative auto-ethnography
can thus be considered an approach that moves “beyond the clichés
and usual explanations to the point where the written memories
come as close as they can make them to ‘an embodied sense of what
happened’”(Davies and Gannon, 2006, p. 3). It also supports
developing researcher reflexivity (Miyahara and Fukao, 2022).
Overall, we engaged in two types of collaborative activities over
the course of a period of 18 months: writing and discussing. In
hindsight, this period can be divided into three phases: starting up,
exploring, and co-working. The first phase was kicked off by an
online dialogue session with about 30 participants convened by
the Design Impact Transition Platform of the Erasmus University
Rotterdam in April 2022. The session was meant to explore and
share experiences with a wide range of ethical dilemmas arising
from TR collaboration in practice. Following this session, some
participants continued deliberating on the questions and dilem-
mas raised in differing constellations and developed the idea of
codifying and sharing our experiences and insights via a
publication. In a second phase, we started writing down individual
ethical dilemmas, both those we had discussed during the seminar
and additional ones. These writings were brought together in an
online shared file, where we continued our discussions. This was
accompanied by meetings in differing constellations and of
differing intensity for the researchers involved.
A third phase of intense co-work was framed by two broader
online sessions. During a session in May 2023, we shared and
discussed a first attempt at an analysis and sense-making of our
individual dilemmas. During this session, we discerned the
heuristic by Mertens et al. (2017) and discussed how it could be
helpful in structuring our different experiences. Inspired by
Mertens et al. (2017), we re-engaged with the three critical
dimensions of any research paradigm to scrutinise our philoso-
phical commitments to doing TR. A re-engagement with issues of
axiology (the nature of ethics and values), ontology (the nature of
reality), and epistemology (the nature of knowledge), as
illustrated in Table 1, allowed us to reconcile our ethical
dilemmas and opened a space for a more nuanced understanding
and bottom-up approach to the ethics of collaboration in TR. In
moving forward, the heuristic also helped to guide the elicitation
of additional dilemmas. This session kicked off a period of
focused co-writing leading up to a second session in December
2023, where we discussed writing progress and specifically made
sense of and related the ethical dilemmas to existing literature and
insights.
Especially in this last phase, as we interacted dialogically to
analyse and interpret the collection of storied experiences of
ethical dilemmas, our thinking about the ethics of collaboration
has evolved. It went beyond considering the inadequacy of
institutional rules and how we navigated those, towards acknowl-
edging their interplay with individual positionality and a
researcher’s situated practice. Closer attention to the contexts
within which the ethical dilemmas have arisen has led us to
return to our philosophical commitments as transformative
researchers and reflect on our assumptions about collaboration
and research from a transformative standpoint.
The author team thus comprises a high proportion of those
participating in the initial session, as well as others who joined the
ensuing collective interpretation and analysis resulting in this
paper. An important characteristic of the authors is that we are all
affiliated with academic research institutions and that all but one
of these institutions are based in high-income countries. It is in
this context that we have shared our experiences, which is also
Table 1 The heuristic guiding our collaborative autoethnography.
Dimension Philosophical commitments from a transformative research
standpoint
Experiential encounters of the author team (described in
more detail in Tables 2–4)
Axiology Transformative researchers are part of the processes and contexts that
they are researching, and they are actively committed to knowledge
production and transformative action. TR aims to address persistent
social-ecological problems to contribute to transitions towards more just
and sustainable societies and democratic relations.
Encounter 1: Clear roles or conflict of interest?
Encounter 2: Prioritising interests of patients or other
groups? (marginalised vs other groups)
Encounter 3: Improving learning journeys or testing a course
design? (action vs. knowledge)
Encounter 4: Fulfilling existential and career needs or
furthering societal impact? (own existence vs improving
others’existence)
Encounter 5: Compromising own values or standing strong?
Ontology Transformative research can start from different ontological stances,
including critical realist, pragmatist, or subjectivist perspectives. This
includes a strong acknowledgement of multiple versions of perceived
reality.
Encounter 6: If maths anxiety and eco-anxiety can be a ‘real’
thing, why can’t science anxiety also be real?
Encounter 7: They are ‘climate displaced persons’, aren’t
they?
Encounter 8: This is a ‘marginalised’school, isn’t it?
Epistemology Knowledge is created through multiple ways of knowing by multiple
knowers. The processes of knowledge development need to facilitate
inclusivity of knowledge and recognise how power inequities shape the
normative definition of what is considered legitimate knowledge.
Encounter 9: Shall we ignore them since they do not know
better or enter into dialogue?
Encounter 10: Shall I push harder to get heard or be silent?
Encounter 11: Shall I go along with the powers that are or take
the opportunity to create a new playing field?
Encounter 12: Shall I make impact with my fellow policy
officials or my academic colleagues?
Encounter 13: We have established a shared understanding
for our collaboration, didn’twe?
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limited by it. As such, this paper will mainly speak to other
researchers affiliated with academic institutions in comparable
settings. Acknowledging these limitations, we are from different
(inter)disciplinary backgrounds
2
, nationalities, and work in
different national settings and urban and rural locations. This
diversity of contexts impacts the constellation of ethical dilemmas
that we were faced with. We thus synthesise lessons from
disparate yet still limited contexts, whilst remaining cognisant of
the ungeneralisable nature of such a study.
Collaboration in transformative research practice
At the heart of our collaborative autoethnographic experience was
the sharing and sensemaking of ethical dilemmas. In this section,
we share those dilemmas (see Tables 2–4) clustered along the
three philosophical commitments that served to deepen the
analysis and interpretation of our storied experience. We embed
our dilemmas with the broader body of knowledge around similar
issues to discuss ways forward for practical knowledge around
‘what is good’TR practice and ‘how to’navigate ethical dilemmas.
Axiological dimension. Axiology is the study of value, which
concerns what is considered ‘good’, what is valued, and most
importantly, what ‘ought to be’. The axiological standpoint of TR
is to address persistent societal problems and to contribute to
transitions towards more just and sustainable societies. The
commitment to knowledge development and transformative
actions is also shaped by different personal judgements, dis-
ciplinary traditions, and institutional contexts. Together, these
raise ethical concerns around the shape and form of research
collaborations, the research lines being pursued, and where and
for whom the benefits of the research accrue. Table 2provides the
details of the ethical dilemmas (described as encounters) that we
discuss in the following.
Taking up a transformative stance goes hand in hand with
individual researchers holding different roles at the same time
(Hoffmann et al., 2022; Horlings et al., 2020; Jhagroe, 2018; Schut
et al., 2014). Often resulting from this, they also perceive a wide
range of responsibilities towards diverse groups (stakeholders,
peers, the academic community, etc.). This is why transformative
researchers face questions of who is responsible for what and
whom in front of whom, and these questions influence and are
influenced by what they consider the ‘right’thing to do in relation
to others in a collaborative setting. As a result, their axiological
position is constructed intersubjectively in and through interac-
tions unfolding in the communities of important others. It is thus
relational and may differ depending on ‘the other’in the research
collaboration (Arrona & Larrea, 2018; Bartels and Wittmayer,
2018). Encounter 1 illustrates this through a constellation of the
research collaboration that holds the potential to become a
conflict of interest.
Such conflicts of interest can also occur in the very choice of
which ‘community’is being considered as the main beneficiary of
the collaboration. The emphasis on action in TR, especially with
regards to the principles of beneficence and justice that we
mentioned in “Ethics in transformative research”, can increase
this dilemma. Researchers are to continuously evaluate their
(perceived) obligations. This includes, for example, obligations
towards the scientific community (contributions to the academic
discourse via publications) vs. obligations towards stakeholders
(being a provider of free practical advice or consultant) vs.
scientific requirements (academic rigour and independence) vs.
stakeholder requests (answering practical questions). Researchers
have to position themselves in this contested field of what ‘good
research’and ‘useful outcomes’mean and sometimes question or
challenge their peers or the academic system at large (see also
Kump et al., 2023). This is the very question raised by Encounter
2, where researchers are forced to decide which stakeholders’
values and needs should be prioritised in transforming clinical
practice and improving the lives of patients.
Moreover, a similar prioritisation between the interests of
different groups needs to be made between whether to create
knowledge according to traditional scientificstandardsof
systematicity and rigour or supporting collaborators in
developing usable knowledge. This is surely a dilemma that
arises from being embedded in an institutional context that
judges according to different standards, but it also arises from
thedoublecommitmentofTRtoknowledgedevelopmentand
transformative action (Bartels et al., 2020). Huang et al. (2024)
for example show how axiological assumptions serve as the
base from which different notions of research excellence (e.g.,
scientificrigour,‘impactful’scholarship) are operationalised
and supported institutionally. Encounter 3 reflects a similar
dilemma as the lecturer juggles conflicting priorities that are
inherent to the axiological concerns of TR. That is, can the
goals of knowledge development in the traditional academic
sense and transformative action be achieved simultaneously?
The answer provided by Encounter 3 seems to suggest a
redefinition of what ‘good’scientificknowledgeis,for
immediate action to be possible.
Yet, perceived responsibilities—towards human and non-
human actors, but also towards the own university, the
institutional arrangements in which we partake, and what we
understand as ethical behaviours—exist in a close, interdependent
relationship with our inner ethical standards. Creed et al. (2022,
p. 358) capture this “collection of sedimented evaluations of
experiences, attachments, and commitments”as an ‘embodied
world of concern’. This can illustrate the complexity of how an
individual researcher’s values, emotions, or sentiments tend to
intertwine, and can sometimes clash, with the concerns of their
communities and the social-political situation where they operate.
Given that one’s embodied world of concern is not fixed but
characterised by emerging pluralism, as Encounter 4 illustrates,
the consequence of an ethical decision tends to fall more heavily
on those with less axiological privilege, such as early career
researchers or those located in regions where the opportunity for
scientific publishing is limited (Kruijf et al., 2022).
As transformative researchers seek systemic change, their values
cannot help but influence their research collaboration, including
the choice of whom they work with and which methods to use.
However, the intention of strengthening the responsiveness of
research to societal and political needs through TR collaborations
risks being co-opted by the interests of those funding research
activities (Bauwens et al., 2023; Strydom et al., 2010). As illustrated
in Encounter 5, this might cause dilemmas when being
approached by stakeholders (e.g., oil and gas companies) to do
research, which may not sit well with the subjective judgements of
the researcher or with an overall need for transformative change.
Researchers can be caught in an odd position and left to wonder
whether a compromise of values is worth the risks and end gain,
depending on whether a positive contribution can still be
achieved. Negotiating our axiological stances with collaborators
thus allows researchers to be seen as social beings embedded in
patterns of social interdependence, who are not only “capable and
can flourish”but also “vulnerable and susceptible to various kinds
of loss or harm [and] can suffer”(Sayer, 2011,p.1).
Ontological dimension. Ontology is the philosophical study of
being, which concerns the nature of reality and what really exists.
TR can start from diverse ontological stances, including critical
realist, pragmatist, or subjectivist perspectives. This includes a
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strong acknowledgement that “there are multiple versions of what
is believed to be real”(Mertens, 2017, p. 21). Yet, such a pluralist
stance remains a theoretical exercise up until the point that
researchers ought to define what are ‘the things’that need to be
transformed and into what. In this situation, at least two debates
arise: Do ‘the things’exist based on a specific ontological com-
mitment, such as the divide between measurable constructs and
socially constructed understandings of risks and inequities. And is
the existence of ‘the things’universal or merely a construct of a
specific time, space, or social group? As the researcher illustrated
in Encounter 6 (see Table 3for the detailed encounters), if maths
anxiety and eco-anxiety are recognised as ‘real’because of
growing clinical research, why can’t the research team accept the
construct of ‘science anxiety’that their teacher collaborators have
Table 2 Axiological concerns in our experiential encounters.
Encounter 1: Clear roles or conflict of interest?
“My PhD project was transformative, as it initiated a collaboration between my university and a third party. This organisation was running a programme,
the data of which I would receive and analyse. The lead of the programme would be one of my co-promotors and potentially co-author on the scientific
articles that would be cumulating into my PhD thesis. To me, this appeared as a potential conflict of interest that could emerge from such a
constellation, namely that even though I wouldn’t be directly evaluating the programme, my research could lead to conclusions about the programme
and how it was managed. Drawing also possibly critical conclusions was one of the pre-conditions for earning a doctorate and should not be
overshadowed with the interest of the organisation nor be threatened by the dependency relationship between a PhD-student and their co-promotor. In
the interview for the position, I therefore asked which rules they had in place to avoid a (perceived) conflict of interest. They looked at me with surprise
and asked me “Why would there be a conflict of interest?”. Thankfully, the other co-promotor agreed with my line of reasoning. After I was hired, we
agreed that in articles concerning the data from the programme, the lead of the programme would not be involved or co-author. During the project, I had
to remind them several times of this agreement, but in the end, the programme lead did not interfere in the content of the article about the programme.”
(PhD researcher, 2015, The Netherlands)
Encounter 2: Prioritising interests of patients or other groups?
“Doing collaborative design research in the healthcare sector is done with the goal to transform clinical practice, to ensure the quality of lives of patients,
to improve the situation for every stakeholder involved, to improve …So, you have patients, health care professionals, maybe the hospital management,
you have policy makers, etc. And all of these have different interests in a transformation process. One of the main challenges for me in doing
collaborative design research is the question of who is the most important stakeholder in my research? So, when I’m doing my collaborative design
research, my main interest is to improve the lives of patients. But you can always argue that, you know, some other group may be more important as
well.”(PhD-researcher, 2021, The Netherlands)
Encounter 3: Improving learning journeys or testing a course design?
“With an intention of transforming the ways we teach, we have set up a minor at our university, where we use a project-based student-centred
pedagogical approach as well as systems thinking, transition thinking, resilience thinking, design thinking and transformative education theory to
innovate in the way we deliver education, making it competencies focused and impact driven. This minor is considered an interdisciplinary experiment
and we have conducted research on the minor to understand students’transformative learning journeys and their acquisition of competencies. The
research was to focus on analysing learning reflections by students which they shared at different points of their transformative learning journey. As a
researcher, I was thus supposed to use the learning reflections to test the course design, however, at a certain point in time, I felt that these reflections
were also a great instrument for feedback on how to adjust the course ‘on the go’and change elements that might contribute to improving the student’s
journey. Doing so, however would not allow me to ‘test’the implementation of a finished design. I think that this somehow illustrates the difficulties of
being a researcher that looks at things reflectively, but does not influence the trajectory of research while doing it, but also the challenge of being in a
researcher position seeing that there are possibilities to use the research for immediate improvement that, at the same time, might make the research
design too complex to fall into the scope of regular research to be published in academic journals. A focus on a more reflexive type of research could
have been chosen instead, but I was not sure how to make observations or set-up changes ‘on the go’as ‘proper experiments’.”(Lecturer, 2022,
Netherlands)
Encounter 4: Fulfilling existential and career needs or furthering societal impact?
“Doing collaborative design research in the healthcare sector is partly driven by the urge to transform the healthcare system and to have an impact in
and on the lives of people. So, a lot of the things that I was doing, I actually could not publish about because these actions were not living up to the
scientific standards for publishing. While at the same time, I needed to publish to earn a PhD-degree within a formalised contract period. It was this kind
of trade-off that I’ve made in my PhD-research, where I was spending most time on those projects that would result into publishable data. Being on a
temporary contract, I couldn’t afford spending time on projects that did not have the potential to lead to a publication with first authorship. So, there’s
definitely a big challenge of how one can stimulate researchers to be keener to actually do something and change the society instead of focusing on that
research output”(PhD-researcher, 2021, The Netherlands).
Encounter 5: Compromising own values or standing strong?
“At one point, our research group was asked by a major oil and gas company if we could support them in their ‘transition’. With our mission being to
support sustainability transitions, we had and have ongoing, at times fierce, internal debates on whether we should in general work for oil and gas –the
argument being the need to proactively phase out the fossil parts of their business model and transition towards a sustainable alternative. My position is
that in principle we should be able to do it, if we can do it on our terms: independent, open science and with a focus on just, sustainability transitions.
Based on this thinking, we made a proposal to organise a transformative research project in which we would work with change makers from within the
organisation to explore a fundamental transition of the organisation into a fossil-free world within the timeframe climate science gives us. We also asked
commercial rates for this research. The company came back, indicating it was too expensive and ambitious. They rather wanted a leadership process
with some training in transition thinking and support in transformative research methods (while not using this specific term). Their understanding of
‘transition’in other words, was an open-ended change management process doing things better rather than a fundamental rethink of their existence to
create space for a truly just and sustainable alternative. Based on that we decided not to work with them. In the end, the question remains if we could
have made a significant change and triggered some small-scale transformative change if we did have taken the smaller assignment.”(Professor, 2021,
Netherlands)
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perceived in their classrooms? Collaboration thus remains espe-
cially challenging when researchers strive for academic rigour
from an empiricist standpoint while having to cross paths or
work with individuals from different ontological positions
(Midgley, 2011).
Commitments to working collaboratively with members of
‘marginalised’and ‘vulnerable’communities add to this dilemma,
as researchers are bound to encounter the ethical dilemmas of whose
reality is privileged, whose reality can or should be legitimised and
considered ‘true’in a TR process (Kwan and Walsh, 2018). In
Encounter 7, for instance, research participants do not recognise
themselves as ‘climate displaced persons’or ‘climate migrants’
because they have a long history of migration for a plethora of
reasons. Now, should researchers continue using this term with a
view to gain political attention to the issues of climate change, or
should they abstain from doing so? How does this relate to their
commitment to transformative action, including shaping political
agendas? The intention to target system-level change in TR (Burns,
2014;Kemmis,2008) also means that researchers ought to
interrogate the mechanisms that inflict certain perceived realities
on the powerless in the name of good causes (Edelman, 2018;
Feltham-King et al., 2018), the ways in which these narratives are
deployed by powerful stakeholders (Thomas and Warner, 2019)and
how these are translated into (research) action.
Moreover, research and action on ‘scientific’problems can
deflect attention from other problems that local communities
most care about or lead to unexpected, even negative,
implications for some stakeholders. With increasing pressure
on the societal impact of research and funding tied to certain
policy goals, the issues of labelling and appropriation might
only perpetuate a deficit perspective on specific groups
(Eriksen et al., 2021; Escobar, 2011; van Steenbergen, 2020).
Encounter 8 highlights that, without caution, well-intended
efforts risk perpetuating harm and injustice —upholding a
certain deficit perspective of the community in question.
Communities accustomed to ‘helicopter’research, where
academics ‘fly-in, fly-out’to further their careers at the
expense of the communities, may be reluctant to collaborate.
This necessitates transparency, active listening, deliberative
involvement, and trust building (Adame, 2021;Haelewaters
et al., 2021). It also reminds us of the ‘seagull syndrome’,’
which attests to the frustration felt by community members
towards outsider ‘experts’making generalisations and false
diagnoses based on what is usually a superficial or snapshot
understanding of local community dynamics (Porter, 2016). In
some incidents, transformative researchers may need to
redesign collaboration processes in TR that centre on the
realities of people in the study (Hickey et al., 2018).
Epistemological dimension. Epistemology is the philosophical
study of knowledge, and its primary concern is the relationship
Table 3 Ontological concerns in our experiential encounters.
Encounter 6: If maths anxiety and eco-anxiety can be a ‘real’thing, why can’t science anxiety also be real?
“When I was as a graduate research assistant of a transdisciplinary team, I was caught in-between the ways in which neuroscientists, learning scientists,
education researchers and teachers perceive what constitute as a ‘real’educational issue to be problematised, researched, and invested in. When
developing a follow-up funding proposal, many teachers suggested that evidence-based instruments were only effective when students were willing to
engage. To better support their teaching, the research team should therefore take a step further and diagnose why students are not engaged in their
science classes, such as the issues of attention deficit disorder and anxiety. On the one hand, part of the research team was reluctant to accepting the
suggestion as these were considered as clinical issues that require professional medical diagnosis. On the other hand, those researchers who prioritised
teachers’need and lived realities argued that teachers are also ‘professionals’, so their empirical observation in the classrooms should be taken seriously
by the scientific and medical community. Against this backdrop, I was asked to review literature on maths anxiety and eco-anxiety to draw insights on
how they were clinically diagnosed, with a view to ‘prove’that teacher’s perceptions thereof exist. I turned down the job because a part of me felt that
this approach to problem identification was not ‘scientific’at that time. However, as my experience in transformative research grew, I began to wonder if
the given task of ‘proving’the existence of teachers’perceptions was a form of joint problem identification that knowledge co-production scholars
emphasise. I also wonder if I had overlooked an entry point that has a transformative potential for improving classroom teaching holistically.”(Doctoral
researcher, 2019, Canada)
Encounter 7: They are ‘climate displaced persons’, aren’t they?
“In our research collaboration, we encountered tremendous challenges in defining who are those migrants and/or displaced populations impacted by
climate change. Understandings of climate change impacts remain limited in the region of our study. For example, based on the official household
survey, only half of the population in the government-planned relocation programme heard of the term ‘climate change’. It is therefore not surprising
that our study participants do not recognise themselves as the ‘vulnerable’population affected by climate change, nor ‘climate migrants’or even ‘climate
refugees’. They mostly attributed government’s plans and their decisions to move as ‘looking for a better job’or ‘getting better health care services,’
rather than climate change. However, for the sake of awareness raising and political campaign, the research team was asked by the funder to name this
population as ‘climate displaced persons’. We pushed back on the request, explaining that the issues of weather-related displacement and climate-
induced migration are highly interconnected with other societal and ecological problems and treating climate change as the definitive condition in
triggering migration can oversimplify the complexity of people’s lived experience and decision-making process. Unfortunately, our efforts were only seen
as a matter of scientific debate.”(Postdoctoral researcher, 2022, Japan)
Encounter 8: Narratives of otherness –this is a ‘marginalised’school, isn’t it?
“For a study looking at e-cigarette litter as an environmental problem and proxy for youth e-cigarette use, we were conducting a Garbology study at local
high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of the high schools was a school with especially low socioeconomic and education status. We were
picking up tobacco related trash on their campus, when one of the teachers from the school, who was having an afterschool programme, noticed what
we were doing. While we always anonymise our data and were not planning to give the names of any of the schools in our final results, the teacher was
visibly annoyed at what we were doing and asked us if we were just trying to give the school further a bad reputation. Notwithstanding communicating
results to the teacher, he wanted to ensure that we weren’t doing data collection at the expense of a school that already had been maligned because they
were operating under duress financial and otherwise. This experience in the field with people and institutions that might already feel marginalised and
feel that research about them will further entrench that sense of being behind, or otherised –it stuck with me since throughout my field research career.”
(Postdoctoral researcher, 2018, United States)
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between the knower and what can be known. Transformative
researchers usually work at the interface of disciplines, each with
their own ideas on what constitutes ‘scientifically sound’but also
‘socially robust’or ‘actionable’knowledge (Mach et al., 2020;
Nowotny et al., 2003). Many thus hold the epistemological
assumption that knowledge is created through multiple ways of
knowing, and the processes of knowledge generation need to
recognise how power inequities may shape the normative defi-
nition of legitimate knowledge. This stance raises ethical concerns
about whose knowledge systems and ways of knowing are
included, privileged, and/or legitimised in TR practice. Moreover,
it raises concerns about ways of ensuring a plurality of knowledge
spaces (Savransky, 2017).
Using an epistemological lens to interrogate collaborative
practice in TR can illuminate a wide range of ethical dilemmas
associated with longstanding critiques of Western norms and
‘scientific superiority’(Dotson, 2011; Dutta et al., 2022; Wijsman
and Feagan, 2019). It also brings to the fore the power dynamics
inherent within collaborative processes of TR for sustainability
(de Geus et al., 2023; Frantzeskaki and Rok, 2018; Kanemasu and
Molnar, 2020; Kok et al., 2021; Strumińska-Kutra and Scholl,
2022). A particular ethical challenge is related to the fact that it is
typically researchers from the Global North who design and lead
research collaborations, even when these take place in the Global
South. This immediately creates “an inequality that is not
conducive to effective co-production”and requires “dedicated
commitment to identify and confront the embodied power relations
[and] hegemonic knowledge systems among the participants in the
process”(Vincent, 2022, p. 890). See Table 4for details on the
ethical dilemmas that we discuss in the following.
Concerns about epistemic justice (Ackerly et al., 2020; Harvey
et al., 2022; Temper and Del Bene, 2016) and interpretation of
voices (Komulainen, 2007) are largely rooted in the deficit
narratives about the capacity of certain groups for producing
knowledge or for being knowers. Encounter 9 shows how easily
certain voices can be muted as not being considered to speak
from a position of knowledge. Research processes can usefully be
expanded to include disinterested or disengaged citizens (Boyle
et al., 2022), or those opposing a project or initiative so as to lay
bare the associated tensions of knowledge integration and co-
production (Cockburn, 2022). Encounter 10 illustrates that such
silencing also relates to the question of who holds legitimate
knowledge. This research has three parties that may hold
legitimate knowledge: the researcher, the corporation, and the
local community. However, the extent to which the researchers’
knowledge is heard remains unclear since the corporation does
not consider it in its actions. It also illustrates common
insecurities about what one can attain using certain research
methods. The reliance of political institutions and citizens on
expert advice, particularly when dealing with acute crises (e.g.,
Covid-19 pandemic), also tends to exacerbate the depoliticisation
of decisions (Rovelli, 2021).
Moreover, TR practice nearly inevitably results in privileging
certain ways of knowing and knowledges. Researchers make space
for shared action or dialogue around a certain issue, inviting
certain groups but not others, and choosing certain methods and
not others. Encounter 11 illustrates the issue of favouritism in
research collaboration. It elaborates on how thoughtful facilita-
tion can intervene to level the playing field and provide a way out
of the dilemma going beyond the question of whose benefitit
serves. This facilitation enables meaningful collaboration among
all parties involved. Particularly in policy sectors dominated by
political and economic considerations, which exhibit strong
vested interests, there is a need to foster meaningful and safe
participation (Nastar et al., 2018). Skilled facilitation is crucial for
uniting marginalised groups, preparing them to deal with the
intricacies of scientific jargon and technological hegemony
(Djenontin and Meadow, 2018; Reed and Abernethy, 2018).
The contextual dimensions of collaborators, their associated
worldviews, and the social networks in which they are situated are
important epistemological foundations. Yet, these are not static
and can shift over time throughout collaborative partnerships.
As explicated in “Introducing transformative research”,TR
represents an epistemological shift to recognise researchers as
sense-makers, agency holders, and change agents. This philoso-
phical commitment can create dilemmas for ‘embedded
researchers’seeking to strengthen the science-policy interface.
Encounter 12 illustrates how occupying a dual role —to dive into
action and to publish scientifically —can be at odds. This
encounter alludes to the fact that transformative researchers often
navigate different roles, which come with different, at times
conflicting, epistemological priorities and ways of knowing (e.g.,
roles as a change agent and a reflective scientist, the approach of
‘Two-Eyed Seeing’by Indigenous scholars) (Bulten et al., 2021;
Temper et al., 2019; Wittmayer and Schäpke, 2014). Importantly,
such roles change over time in a TR practice and over the course
of a researcher’s career (McGowan et al., 2014; Pohl et al., 2017).
Involving diverse stakeholders in knowledge co-production
also inevitably leads to ethical questions concerning how to
integrate diverse knowledge systems, especially those using multi-
method research designs or models to aid decision-making
(Hoffmann et al., 2017). Models can be useful in providing
scenarios, however, they are constructed by people based on
certain assumptions. These assumptions serve as the fundamental
lenses through which complex real-world systems are simplified,
analysed, and interpreted within the model framework. Despite
the well-intention of researchers, the practice of establishing a
shared understanding and reaching consensus about key
constructs in a model is often unattainable. As Encounter 13
illustrates, participatory model building requires the capacity and
willingness of all involved to knit together kindred, or even
conflicting, perspectives to complement disciplinary specialism.
We explored the dilemmas of researchers pertaining to
knowing ‘how to’act in a certain situation and considering ‘what
is doing good’in that situation. Transformative researchers (re)
build their practical knowledge of what doing research means
through cultivating a reflexive practice that puts experiences in
context and allows to learn from them. From a meta-perspective,
doing TR is a form of experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) and
doing TR involves traversing an action research cycle: experien-
cing and observing one’s action research practice, abstracting
from it, building knowledge, and experimenting with it again to
cultivate what has been referred to as first person inquiry (Reason
and Torbert, 2001).
Concluding thoughts
In this article, we set out to explore which ethical dilemmas
researchers face in TR and how they navigate those in practice.
We highlighted that researchers engaging in TR face a context of
uncertainty and plurality around what counts as ethically
acceptable collaboration. With TR emphasising collaboration, it
becomes important to discern the notion of ‘right relations’with
others (Gram-Hanssen et al., 2022), to attend to the positionality
of the researcher, and to reconfigure power relations. Impor-
tantly, with TR emphasising the need for structural and sys-
tematic changes, researchers need to be aware of how research
itself is characterised by structural injustices.
Using a collaborative autoethnography, we shared ethical
dilemmas to uncover the messiness of collaborative TR practice.
We established how guidance from institutionalised reference
systems (i.e., ethical review boards and procedures) currently falls
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Table 4 Epistemological concerns in our experiential encounters.
Encounter 9: Shall we ignore them since they do not know better or enter into dialogue?
“As part of a collaborative partnership concerning decarbonisation in a rural Irish community, the research team- including myself- acted as part of the project
management team, together with other stakeholders from the local community. The goal of the project was to facilitate the emergence of sustainability initiatives
in a range of sectors including agriculture. To this end, we were using the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors in farms to monitor soil temperature, soil oxygen levels,
photosynthetic radiation etc. These sensors were operating on 2 G connectivity. During the project, we became aware that a local oppositional campaign against
the installation of 5 G masts in the area had conflated our work with their issue in that they were acting under the presumption that 5G was essential to the
operation of the sensors and that we were involved with the roll out of masts. Our local partners in the area did not see this as a major issue, and instead found the
oppositional campaign to represent a small minority of people in the community who were not speaking from a position of knowledge on the topic they were
discussing. There began to emerge some content on social media about what our project was doing and their own concerns regarding 5G. At this point, a
colleague and I held a meeting with one of our research partners of the project management team to see a way forward on this issue, and to highlight the needto
open discussion with the oppositional group, rather than downplaying the topic. We were also cognizant of our position as non-locals in the area, but we
considered this opposition as important, because it acted- to our minds- as a form of participation rather than merely opposition to be avoided. We arranged a
meeting between our local partner/ project leader and the two main leaders within the oppositional campaign. This meeting was facilitated by one of the
researchers as a chair. The meeting gave the oppositional campaign an opportunity to voice concerns and learn more about what our own project was doing.”
(PhD Candidate, 2019, Ireland)
Encounter 10: Shall I push harder to get heard or be silent?
“During my master’s, I had a research project planned in Indonesia, where I investigated the social impact of a smartphone app that was developed and
implemented by a Dutch corporation to improve the production and livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The corporation had a comforting reputation for its
sustainability efforts, and I was in good contact with them. With my bags packed and ticket in hand I was ready to leave for Indonesia, which is when the
COVID19-pandemic struck. The company was really flexible and supported me to change my methods and set up online interviews. So far so good. However,
during my research, I started to realise that the development of their project hadn’t been very inclusive. Because of this, there were many problems with data
protection, implementation, communication, and overall social outcomes of the app. I reflected on these concerns in my final report, which I shared with the
corporation including recommendations. I don’t remember getting a response, or at least after that the contact was short lived. Not too long ago, I saw they
shared a news message on LinkedIn, boasting about the very practices of which I had informed them that they were harmful to the local community. Nothing had
changed, my work didn’t seem to have had a social impact that I had set out to achieve. On the one hand, I feel like I didn’t fully capitalise on the opportunities that
I had to contribute to a more inclusive social dialogue. On the other hand, I was a young researcher and had personally benefited from my contact with the
corporation. Who was I to defy them? And what did I really know; I didn’t even go to Indonesia. In hindsight, I regret not trying harder to bring my concerns to light
although the situation was difficult.”(Master student, 2020, Indonesia/the Netherlands)
Encounter 11: Shall I go along with the powers that are or take the opportunity to create a new playing field?
“As part of an India-Dutch collaborative project aimed at co-developing transition mechanisms for water-sensitive cities, I orchestrated a series of workshops in
India. The objective was to engage stakeholders currently active in fields relevant to water management within India’s secondary cities and to encourage them to
reassess their roles, scrutinise their projects, and recalibrate their approaches, fostering water sensitivity. Contrary to our initial plan, local partnering
organisations issued invitations for a prestigious workshop in Delhi to retired professors and influential figures. Many of these are resistant to endorsing
transformative change, downplaying the urgency and scale of the challenges, due to potential challenges to their authority and the status quo. This deviation was
motivated by a desire to strengthen existing relationships of the local organisation and rendered the framing of the event impervious to challenge, effectively
aiming to silence other voices. This deviation raised concerns: it risked empowering autocratic individuals to eclipse the marginalised voices we aimed to support
in our workshop. Given that our initiative was funded by the Centre, our starting point was inherently non-neutral, making the inclusion of change-resistant figures
a potential obstacle to our transformative objectives. However, I later realised the importance for our local partners to involve these authoritative figures, essential
for strengthening their relationships in the intricate political landscape. Embracing this challenge, I considered two potential strategic advantages from this new
framing: (1) providing a transparent window into the existing governance landscape, and (2) should they embrace the workshop’s message, their elevated status
could render them potent change agents. Consequently, I negotiated with the local partnering institute to enable concerned PhD researchers to select
stakeholders based on their research needs. This compromise diversified the workshop’s representation, mirroring the real contestation occurring on the ground.
Despite the partnering institute’s chosen stakeholders’attempts to dilute the perceived need for extensive reforms, new voices—empowered by researchers’
facilitation—spoke up. This experience underscored the need for a workshop environment that supports change as not just tolerable, but a positive and essential
trajectory –and highlights the role of skilful facilitation and moderation. Eventually, this episode crystallised into a deeper comprehension of the decolonising
process of knowledge production and a revaluation of co-production within the Global South context. When authoritative figures, whose actions mirror repressive
structures of a colonial past, encounter a transformative initiative like this workshop—one that challenges their practices and advocates substantial change—they
frequently respond with discernible resistance.”(PhD researcher, 2023, India/Netherlands)
Encounter 12: Shall I make impact with my fellow policy officials or my academic colleagues?
“As an embedded researcher-bureaucrat, I have two dual roles: One is to be a senior policy official who carries out day to day climate change and sustainability
administrative work and implements policy decisions based on research, regulatory and practical knowledge. Another role is to be a researcher who generates
knowledge based on my own professional lived experiences, complemented by conventional research approaches. Can the dual roles (i.e., bureaucrats and
researchers) co-exist and be recognised as legitimate producers and users of scientific knowledge? This tension was amplified when I initiated a sustainability
transitions project to institutionalise the concept in South Africa. Putting on a policy official hat means that I sometimes had to suspend my scientific
understanding of sustainability transitions for my fellow policy officials to come to a joint interpretation of the concept. This ‘wait’for a co-productive moment is
important because lacking holistic understanding of a sustainability problem would lead to insufficient solutions and negative unintended consequences. The
dilemma is further intensified when I take up a transformative lens. That is, I recognise that publishing the results as a conventional scientist is not enough, but
advocating for change in real-world problems also comes as an added responsibility/commitment. What is my right to do so as an embedded research-bureaucrat
and what are the consequences of challenging the existing agenda to move forward into adopting the concept of sustainability transitions that my fellow academic
colleagues strive for?”(PhD researcher, 2016, South Africa)
Encounter 13: We have established a shared understanding for our collaboration, didn’t we?
“During my PhD studies, I was conducting research on qualities of urban transformations in a transdisciplinary project. The project included different,
interdisciplinary research groups (e.g., Urban Planning Studies, Sustainability Sciences, Social Sciences) and a diverse group of >20 practice partners, ranging from
planning departments of cities, transportation providers, private architectural and planning offices, and regional development and green space interest groups.
During consortium meetings in the early phase of the project, lead partners planned time for developing a shared problem framing between science and practice
partners. However, at the end of the first project year, it became clear that fundamentally different understandings of the notion of ‘landscape’were used. By some
of the architectural researchers’landscape was considered as non-urban, less populated territories, while other scholars and practitioners included all geographies
and settlement types. Far from being innocent, such conceptualisations had implications for drawing system boundaries used in land use modelling. The
assumptions underlying the model had to be revisited and revised –however, this contributed to practice partners becoming more critical about partly
untransparent and hard to understand conditions and assumptions guiding the land use model. The model was critiqued and mistrusted by practitioners as a
‘black box’. Still, the findings from the model were seriously discussed in terms of their practical validity and reliability, which instigated valuable reflections at the
science-practice nexus.”(PhD researcher, 2014, Switzerland)
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short in recognising the particularities of TR. We described how
the research community generates informal principles, or heur-
istics to address this gap. However, we also appreciated that in
actual collaboration, researchers are often ‘put on the spot’to
react ‘ethically’in situ, with limited time and space to withdraw
and consult guidelines on ‘how to behave’. Such informal heur-
istics are thus but a start and a helpful direction for developing
the practical knowledge of researchers on how to navigate a plural
and uncertain context.
This practical knowledge is based on an awareness of the
uncertainty around what constitutes morally good behaviour and
builds through experience and a critical reflexive practice. Our
aim is not to share another set of principles, but rather to high-
light the situatedness of TR and the craftsmanship necessary to
navigate it and, in doing so, build practical knowledge through
experiential learning and insight discovery (Kolb, 1984; Pearce
et al., 2022). Such a bottom-up approach to research ethics builds
on the experiences of researchers engaging in TR as a situated
practice vis-à-vis their personal motivations and normative
ambitions and the institutional contexts they are embedded in.
This approach nurtures the critical reflexivity of researchers about
how they relate to ethical principles and how they translate this
into their normative assumptions, practical hypotheses, and
methodological strategy.
Next to continuous learning, this critical reflexivity on TR as
craftmanship can enhance practical wisdom not only for the
individual but also for the broader community of researchers.
We envision such wisdom not as a set of closed-ended guidelines
or principles, but rather as a growing collection of ethical
questions enabling the TR community to continuously deepen
the interrogation of their axiological, ontological, and episte-
mological commitments (see Table 5). Only through this
ongoing process of reacting, reflecting, and questioning—or as
referred to by Pearce et al. (2022,p.4)as“an insight discovery
process”—can we collectively learn from the past to improve our
future actions.
However, such a bottom-up approach to ethics can only form
one part of the answer, set in times of an evolving research ethics
landscape. Researchers engaging in transformative academic work
cannot and should not be left alone. Additionally, researchers’
ethical judgements cannot be left to their goodwill and virtuous
values alone. Therefore, another important part of the answer is
the carving out of appropriate institutions that can provide
external guidance and accountability. This will require nothing
less than structural and cultural changes in established uni-
versities and research environments. Rather than having
researchers decide between doing good and doing ‘good’research,
such environments should help to align those goals.
From this work, questions arise on how institutional envir-
onments can be reformed or transformed to be more conducive
to the particularities of TR, and to help nurture critical reflexivity.
We highlight the critical role that ethic review boards can play in
starting to rethink their roles, structures, and underlying values.
Practical ideas include employing mentors for transformative
research ethics, having ethical review as a process rather than as a
one-off at the start of the project, or continuously investing in
moral education. Thus, we underscore the importance of indivi-
dual reflexivity and learning. However, we would like to set this in
the broader context of organisational learning, and even
unlearning, among academic institutions to overhaul our aca-
demic systems in response to the urgent imperative of tackling
socio-ecological challenges globally. In this transformative
endeavour, careful consideration of how the ethics of research
and collaboration shape academics’socially engaged work is
indispensable.
Received: 21 December 2023; Accepted: 13 May 2024;
Notes
1 The full set of essentials is the following: (1) Focus on transformations to low-carbon,
resilient living; (2) Focus on solution processes; (3) Focus on ‘how to’practical
knowledge; (4) Approach research as occurring from within the system being
intervened; (5) Work with normative aspects; (6) Seek to transcend current thinking;
(7) Take a multi-faceted approach to understand and shape change; (8) Acknowledge
the value of alternative roles of researchers; (9) Encourage second-order
experimentation; and (10) Be reflexive. Joint application of the essentials would create
highly adaptive, reflexive, collaborative, and impact-oriented research able to enhance
capacity to respond to the climate challenge.
2 Disciplines include amongst others anthropology, business administration, climate
change adaptation, cultural economics, economics, economic geography, education,
health sciences, human geography, international development studies, philosophy,
political science, sociology, urban planning.
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Author contributions
Julia M. Wittmayer and Ying-Syuan Huang drafted the work for important intellectual
content, substantially contributed to the concept and design of the work, and contributed
to the analysis and interpretation of data for the work. Kristina Bogner, Evan Boyle,
Katharina Hölscher, and Timo von Wirth substantially contributed to the concept or
design of the work and contributed to the analysis or interpretation of data for the work.
Tessa Boumans, Jilde Garst, Yogi Hendlin, Mariangela Lavanga, Derk Loorbach, Neha
Mungekar, Mapula Tshangela, Pieter Vandekerckhove, and Ana Vasues contributed to
the analysis or interpretation of data for the work.
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
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