2.1.3. Action Clusters and Methods

Go to the full version of the original text on Methodologies for Interdisciplinary Research by Stella Veciana.

The concept of “action clusters” was developed in the publication "Steps to an Ecology of Networked Knowledge and Innovation. Enabling New Forms of Collaboration among Sciences, Engineering, Arts, and Design". This study is framed within the STEM to STEAM movement that grew out of a renewed interest in how the arts, design, and humanities can contribute to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and how it can help to set up new kinds of collaborations for resource-sharing, education and innovation projects, and transformative transdisciplinary initiatives. Action clusters are groups of activities, key processes, and implementation processes. The idea of “clustering” is a way of going beyond the concept of disciplines as delimited sets of knowledge. The action clusters identified in the study are:

- translating (problem-driven connections among academic, commercial, and civil societies; project formation and translational value)

- convening (overcoming transdisciplinary thresholds)

- enabling (sustained balanced SEAD relationships forming safe, productive environments for hybrid individuals and practices)

- including (spurring innovation through the diversity of communities addressing global issues and local solutions)

- situating (an emerging ecology of creative spaces; “alt spaces”)

- sense-making (multimodal knowledge and ways of knowing; integrating understandings through the STEAM perspective)

- documenting (recording and transmitting: capturing, publishing, curating, archiving)

- sharing (tapping into the passion and creativity of lifelong curiosity and learning)

- collaborating (working across disciplines, organisations, individuals)

- thriving (ethics and values, well-being)

Basically, the method for approaching new forms of collaboration is based on action clusters that do not arise from the branching of the “tree of science” but from “knowledge networks” based on structures with multiple relational connections. The protocol describes action clusters as accessible spaces that go beyond the notion of disciplines and can be used, for example, to investigate conflicts and make the value of dissent visible, etc.