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Mainstreaming social sciences expertise in UK environment policy and practice organisations: retrospect and prospect

Morris, Carol; Brockett, Beth F.T.; Selwood, Sara; Carr, Victoria; Hall, Jilly; Hughes, Joelene; Ambrose-Oji, Bianca

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Authors

Beth F.T. Brockett

Sara Selwood

Victoria Carr

Jilly Hall

Joelene Hughes

Bianca Ambrose-Oji



Abstract

Building upon the concept of mainstreaming social sciences within conservation, we consider their mainstreaming, and so integration, within UK environment policy and practice (EPP) organisations. The paper responds to increasing calls to recognise the essential role of social sciences in addressing global environmental crises across policy, practice and research. An actor-oriented approach was deployed, producing empirical information from a multi-stage, co-designed, collaborative study involving 19 social scientists from a range of EPP organisations, to understand how they experience the mainstreaming of social sciences. The findings contribute to debates about the politics of knowledge in organisational domains other than those focused on research, specifically EPP organisations. Evidence was found of recent positive changes in how social sciences are perceived, resourced and utilised within EPP, as well as examples of positive impact. However, although EPP organisations are recognising the opportunities that social sciences expertise brings, in practice social sciences still face barriers to effective integration. Many of the challenges faced by the social sciences within academic multi-discipline research (e.g., late, narrow, or selective enrolment) were also experienced in EPP organisations, along with some unique challenges. Informed by the findings, the paper proposes a set of integration indicators designed to assess organisational progress toward addressing the observed challenges. It is recommended that these indicators are employed at a strategic level by EPP organisations seeking to better integrate social sciences expertise into their work.

Citation

Morris, C., Brockett, B. F., Selwood, S., Carr, V., Hall, J., Hughes, J., & Ambrose-Oji, B. (2024). Mainstreaming social sciences expertise in UK environment policy and practice organisations: retrospect and prospect. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), Article 399. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02891-z

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Feb 28, 2024
Online Publication Date Mar 12, 2024
Publication Date Mar 12, 2024
Deposit Date Mar 8, 2024
Publicly Available Date Mar 14, 2024
Journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
Electronic ISSN 2662-9992
Publisher Springer Nature
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 11
Issue 1
Article Number 399
DOI https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02891-z
Keywords Environmental studies Science, technology and society
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/32176591
Publisher URL https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-02891-z
Additional Information Received: 21 March 2023; Accepted: 28 February 2024; First Online: 12 March 2024; : The authors declare no competing interests.; : Institutional ethical approval for the research was granted in March 2020 from the School of Geography, University of Nottingham.; : Participation was voluntary and all participants provided written informed consent.

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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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