The ESRC Nexus Network: Core Activities and Outputs, 2014-2018

DOI

From its launch in June 2014 through to the end of its project life in 2018, the ESRC Nexus Network worked to support transdisciplinary research at the food-water-energy-environment nexus and to create meaningful links between communities of researchers, policymakers, business leaders and practitioners. Data collated here includes records of public facing network activities such as published working papers, reports, email newsletters and workshop activities. The purpose of the Network+ was to build community through running events, interacting with decision makers, building a network and onward-funding original research. As such, the Network+ did not conduct research in a traditional sense. However, the data and documents collated here represent the substantive knowledge creation activities of the Network+ and can be considered a form of research data in themselves - which were used to iteratively build the network, influence and impact.From its launch in June 2014 until 2018, the ESRC Nexus Network worked to support transdisciplinary research at the food-water-energy-environment nexus, and to create meaningful links between communities of researchers, policymakers, business leaders and practitioners. Interdependencies, tensions and trade-offs between energy, environment and food generate some of the most significant challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. Addressing these at local, national and international scales, the social sciences have the potential to make ground-breaking contributions. But equally important is a process of continuous and deep engagement between the academic and non-academic communities. Run by the universities of Sussex, East Anglia and Cambridge, the Nexus Network+ (NW+) engaged the social science community with these complex 'Nexus challenges' and linked them to research users from business, government and civil society.

This collection contains self-published written academic outputs and a selection of administrative data from and about the Nexus Network+ The papers and documents in this collection were selected in order to show breadth of outputs by the Network + and the frequency of communication to members of the Network. All documents were retreived from the Nexus Network+ website or the the personal archive of the research manager (documents which were deemed suitable for archiving public circulation). The collation rules were as follows: Selected for inclusion were all public documents that (reported network activity OR repored research by network grants) AND were self-published by the Network+ and made available on the website). In addition to those documents, a record of all emails (subject line + date) sent to the open Network+ email distribution lists was collated from the email sending platform while it was still active. These records are included to illustrate frequency and issue orientation of public communications. Finally, a selection of documents has been collated from a small internal project, "Evaluating Research Capabilities" that was designed to reflect on and evaluate the capabilities for transdisciplinary reserach that were fostered by research activities in the Network+. These documents may offer funders or managers of future iterations of the Network+ model some ideas for critical evaluation.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-853703
Metadata Access https://datacatalogue.cessda.eu/oai-pmh/v0/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_ddi25&identifier=917bbe01f87a12fcbf2fec701af8c4dc76705e24636278bb891e65ad270cf90c
Provenance
Creator O'Donovan, C, University College London
Publisher UK Data Service
Publication Year 2021
Funding Reference Economic and Social Research Council
Rights Cian O'Donovan, University College London; The Data Collection is available to any user without the requirement for registration for download/access.
OpenAccess true
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Text
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Economics; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences
Spatial Coverage United Kingdom