NEW: Toolkit for Collaborative Working Across Disciplines & Sectors

This practical toolkit will help environmental and social scientists, practitioners and policymakers to build stronger relationships and collaborate more effectively on urgent environmental problems.

Collaborative working across environmental disciplines and sectors is vital. Alongside technical improvements and breakthroughs, profound societal change will be necessary to meet our climate and environment goals. There is growing recognition of the importance of the social sciences for understanding people’s views, needs, risks and vulnerabilities, and finding more effective, just solutions to the challenges we face.

However, collaborative working across disciplines can be difficult to adopt in practice. This toolkit from ACCESS and the IES provides a practical and flexible framework and supporting resources to help overcome those difficulties.

It was developed as part of the ACCESS FlexFund project Environmental Social Science in Interdisciplinary Working, which aims to strengthen interdisciplinary working between environmental and social scientists, equipping both communities with the tools and insights needed to work more effectively together on urgent environmental issues. Developed over the course of a year, the project received input from over 40 environmental researchers and practitioners.

This project and toolkit are part of ACCESS and the IES’s mission to support greater integration of environmental social sciences with other environmental science disciplines. The IES is promoting greater visibility of social science within its membership, aiming to ensure behavioural and social science evidence is used alongside other environmental expertise to support effective environmental change.

Ethny Childs, Head of Communities & Partnerships at the IES said: “Collaboration is an essential skill for environmental professionals. Environmental science is, at its core, an interdisciplinary field, and we must support the sector to build meaningful and impactful collaborations. By working across disciplines and sectors, we can better address the complex and interconnected challenges facing our society and environment and develop solutions that deliver positive environmental outcomes in a just and equitable way.”

Birgitta Gatersleben, Co-Director of ACCESS said: “Developing the toolkit with a wide range of experts was a great experience and a fantastic example of successful collaborative working in itself. The toolkit provides flexible practical guidance and resources to support collaboration and build bridges between different disciplines. I hope it will be used widely and support greater integration of different environmental sciences including the social sciences.”

Toolkit resources

• Toolkit for collaborative working across disciplines and sectors (pdf)
• Toolkit for collaborative working: slide deck (pdf)
• Toolkit: poster (pdf)