Relu: A Rural Land Use Interdisciplinary Programme 

Philip Lowe

Director, Relu

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The RELU Programme

RELU is promoting interdisciplinary research collaborations to advance understandings of the social, economic,

environmental and technological challenges facing agriculture and rural areas

ESRC, BBSRC, NERC, Defra, Scottish Government Budget = £25 million 2004-2011 85 projects to date, 500 researchers

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Key Public Challenges

Restoring trust in food chains Promoting robust rural economies Sustaining agriculture in a liberalised

economy Tackling animal disease in a socially

acceptable manner Reducing stress on water catchments Adapting rural living and land use to

environmental change

Avoid partial framings of questions and complex problems

Introduce new framings of research problems

Contextualise technological opportunities and environmental constraints

Provide holistic solutions

Improve accountability by opening up framing of problems and resource allocation decisions

Interdisciplinary Research Claims for interdisciplinary research are that it can help:

• Technological solutions on their own will not suffice

• A need for new technologies to go with grain of social change and social innovation which creatively exploits technological opportunities

• Innovation as combined socio-technical process

Major Environmental Challenges: New imperative for interdisciplinarity

Roles To…

Problem framing

Reflect on the appropriate definition of problems

Public representation

Help illuminate or facilitate expression and engagement of public, consumer and stakeholder preferences, values and motivations

Systems analysis

Understand the organisation and governance of complex systems

What use social sciences in interdisciplinary projects:

Unity of the social, engineering and environmental sciences in intervention mode

Mode of science

Site of discovery/invention

Knowledge generated

Epistemological assumption

Examples

Observational Field Natural observation, leading to induction

All seeing , but detached and neutral observer

Classical environmental and social sciences

Experimentation Laboratory Results of controlled experiment, leading to deduction

All powerful experimenter, ensuring completely controlled and replicable conditions

Physical and biological sciences

Intervention Field Observation and experiment through intervention, leading to innovation

Researchers learn through field interventions

Action research, engineering, medicine, applied social and environmental sciences

Unity of the social, engineering and environmental sciences in intervention mode

Radical Interdisciplinarity: Project Level

Radical Interdisciplinarity: The Programme Level

Encouraging interdisciplinary capacity building seed-corn funding mechanisms workshops and conferences carefully orchestrated to

promote shared perspectives training and career development of researchers interdisciplinary issues of prominent mono-disciplinary

journals

Strategic co-operation between three Research Councils

pooling of funds

joint decision making

combined approach to research applications, assessment, data management

Radical Interdisciplinarity: Inter-Research Council Collaboration

Different models of Interdisciplinary Programme Management

Relu: a cross-council model

SUE: a single council model