1. Relu: A Rural Land Use Interdisciplinary Programme Philip Lowe Director, Relu

2. 2 The RELU Programme RELU is promoting interdisciplinary research collaborations to advance understandings of the social, economic, environmental and technological challenges facing agriculture and rural areas  ESRC, BBSRC, NERC, Defra, Scottish Government  Budget = £25 million  2004-2011  85 projects to date, 500 researchers

3. 3 Key Public Challenges  Restoring trust in food chains  Promoting robust rural economies  Sustaining agriculture in a liberalised economy  Tackling animal disease in a socially acceptable manner  Reducing stress on water catchments  Adapting rural living and land use to environmental change

4.  Avoid partial framings of questions and complex problems  Introduce new framings of research problems  Contextualise technological opportunities and environmental constraints  Provide holistic solutions  Improve accountability by opening up framing of problems and resource allocation decisions Interdisciplinary Research Claims for interdisciplinary research are that it can help:

5. Technological solutions on their own will not suffice A need for new technologies to go with grain of social change and social innovation which creatively exploits technological opportunities Innovation as combined socio- technical process Major Environmental Challenges: New imperative for interdisciplinarity

6. RolesTo… Problem framing Reflect on the appropriate definition of problems Public represent ation Help illuminate or facilitate expression and engagement of public, consumer and stakeholder preferences, values and motivations Systems analysis Understand the organisation and governance of complex systems What use social sciences in interdisciplinary projects:

7. Unity of the social, engineering and environmental sciences in intervention mode Mode of science Site of discovery /invention Knowledge generated Epistemological assumption Examples ObservationalFieldNatural observation, leading to induction All seeing, but detached and neutral observer Classical environmental and social sciences ExperimentationLaboratoryResults of controlled experiment, leading to deduction All powerful experimenter, ensuring completely controlled and replicable conditions Physical and biological sciences InterventionFieldObservation and experiment through intervention, leading to innovation Researchers learn through field interventions Action research, engineering, medicine, applied social and environmental sciences

8. Unity of the social, engineering and environmental sciences in intervention mode

9. Radical Interdisciplinarity: Project Level

10. Radical Interdisciplinarity: The Programme Level  Encouraging interdisciplinary capacity building  seed-corn funding mechanisms  workshops and conferences carefully orchestrated to promote shared perspectives  training and career development of researchers  interdisciplinary issues of prominent mono-disciplinary journals

11.  Strategic co-operation between three Research Councils  pooling of funds  joint decision making  combined approach to research applications, assessment, data management Radical Interdisciplinarity: Inter-Research Council Collaboration

12. Different models of Interdisciplinary Programme Management  Relu: a cross-council model  SUE: a single council model