New grants/funding

Defence Science and Technology Group of the Department of Defence Collaborative Project Agreement to Gabriele Bammer for “Preparatory work to enhance understanding of, and ability to deal with, unknown unknowns” $62,255.00

RSPH workshops and seminars

Gabriele Bammer organised the third in a series of School-wide seminars on impact and engagement for the PHXchange. Cathy Banwell and Martyn Kirk spoke on ‘Issues in Stakeholder Engagement on Politically-Charged and Controversial Issues.’

Outreach and engagement

Gabriele Bammer co-hosted and co-organised the first meeting of leaders of inter- and trans- disciplinary research organisations in the Oceania region in Brisbane. The 20 leaders who attended the meeting were enthusiastic about forming a peak body for inter- and trans-disciplinary research in the Oceania region with the aim of:

• Fostering attention to grand challenges of particular significance to the Oceania region
• Creating supportive environments and infrastructure
• Developing effective metrics for excellence, impact and return on investment
• Improving funding availability and outcomes
• Supporting next generation organisational leaders
• Providing effective career paths and role models for inter- and trans-disciplinarians at all levels, and especially to support early-career researchers
• Developing workable transition pathways to implementation of new metrics and effective career paths.

Gabriele Bammer was invited to join the Editorial Board of the journal ‘Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies.’ She was also an invited panellist at Bruce Hall High Table on the topic “Faced with global issues, from climate change to change in political climate, what can a university really do ?”

The i2Insights blog (http://i2Insights.org), curated by Gabriele Bammer and Peter Deane, reached a milestone of 1000 followers. May contributions included ten things to know about how to influence policy with research, understanding the groan zone in collaborations, linking collective impact to the characteristics of open living systems and a blog post soliciting ideas to improve the blog.