The 2021 business meeting was held online on Tuesday September 21 following this agenda and report (PDF 223KB).
Attendees: Derrick Armstrong, Gabriele Bammer, Paul Bertsch, Martin Bliemel, Roland Demarco, Nicky Grigg, Mark Howden, Ken Hughey, Ronald Kumar, Stewart Lockie, Louise McWhinnie, Andrew Page, Rob Raven (part), Ken Taylor, Upolu Luma Va’ai (part), Dan Walker, Stuart White
Apologies: Ken Baldwin, Mindy Blaise, Paul Bolger, Tim Colmer, Saul Cunningham, Nick Evans, Susan Forde, Beth Fulton, Iain Gordon, Bronwyn Harch, Libby Harrison, Kate Henne, Pierre Horwitz, Duncan Ivison, Fethi Mansouri, Janet Nelson, Mark New, Tayanah O’Donnell, Rachel Parker, Anna Peeters, Laurent Rivory, Roger Robson-Williams, Allanah Ryan, Stephen Simpson, Huhana Smith, Erica Techera, Iain Walker, Toby Wilkinson
Chair: Gabriele Bammer
Technical assistance: Cassie Moutia
1. Welcome and introductions
In their introductions, participants presented a recent interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary achievement of their own or their organisation and identified what they hoped NITRO-Oceania would achieve, including:
- Providing opportunities to network, generally and for newly established universities
- Providing opportunities to listen to and learn from others, including how other organisations meet the challenges of inter- and trans- disciplinarity
- Strengthening inter- and trans- disciplinary methods, including in co-design
- Providing useful resources
- Developing academic benchmarks for assessing transdisciplinarity, including alternate metrics
- Building the capacity of organisations to undertake and support inter- and trans-disciplinary research
- Raising the profile of and cementing greater legitimacy for inter- and trans- disciplinarity in the academic, policy and industry communities.
2. Activity reports
Gabriele Bammer, Ken Taylor and Paul Bertsch provided more information on the activities described in the report for the meeting. Expansion of activities is stymied by lack of a funded secretariat.
This was followed by a brief discussion of opportunities for members. There was interest in the impact dialogues working group workshops and the thought-pieces working group. The need and potential for organisational capacity building was raised. Members were also asked to consider whether and how they could wear a NITRO-Oceania ‘hat’ in some of their other activities, especially advisory activities.
3. Progress on establishing a secretariat
Members agreed that a paid secretariat was needed for NITRO-Oceania to survive and thrive and that $2K per annum was an achievable amount for many organisations to donate. The target for 2021-22 is to increase the total donation from the $10K achieved in 2020-21, closer to the $40K needed to hire a casual administrator.
4. Nominations for the NITRO-Oceania Executive (2021-2022)
Rob Raven and Stuart White agreed to join the Executive. Rachel Parker has stepped down from the Executive and was heartily thanked for her contributions.