A new episode of the Epistemic Alchemy Podcast is now available here. In this conversation, I speak with Professor Gabriel Bammer of the Australian National University, a pioneering scholar in transdisciplinary research and the founder of Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S).
Our discussion explores how i2S emerged as a response to a persistent problem in work on complex societal and environmental issues: fragmentation. Too often, systems thinkers, interdisciplinarians, action researchers, implementation scholars, and other knowledge communities work in parallel without meaningful integration. Bammer’s work has been an effort to create a more coherent architecture for bringing those insights together.
In the episode, we discuss the evolution of i2S, the importance of understanding complexity more comprehensively, the challenge of supporting policy and practice without controlling them, and the need to work more intentionally with stakeholders, unknowns, diversity, and power. We also touch on the future of AI in this space and the possibility of new tools for navigating the growing landscape of methods and knowledge systems.
This episode will be of interest to scholars, practitioners, and anyone working at the intersection of complexity, knowledge integration, and real-world change.