Abstract
Actors working on global climate and sustainability challenges are faced with two competing imperatives: first, there is an ever-expanding body of knowledge, networks and initiatives generating new insights that should be shared. Second, we see a growing recognition that fly-in, fly-out conferencing practices are an insufficient and unsustainable model for learning, boundary crossing and collaboration towards sustainability transformations. Against this backdrop, we argue that knowledge exchange for societal transformations needs to consider three interrelated dimensions: (1) equity and inclusion – access to and representation in both process and content for all, (2) low carbon – limits the ecological burden produced by the exchange, and (3) impact – outcomes at individual and collective levels that enhance our ability to act. How we navigate the tensions that may emerge from these dimensions is a matter of pressing importance. This research article examines the potential of multi-sited dialogues as an approach to co-producing transdisciplinary solutions by using the three dimensions as the analytical framework. We report on a series of dialogue-focused conference sessions convened at three international conferences in 2023. Our findings describe the contributions that the multi-sited dialogue process brought to knowledge co-production across space and time, and the contribution of facilitation practices to the outcomes of these dialogues. We also introduce and discuss the set of principles for transforming sustainable conferencing practices that were co-produced over the three dialogues.
Key messages
Equity and inclusion, low-carbon convening, and impact are three key dimensions to sustainable knowledge exchange.
Multi-sited dialogues offer a promising approach to co-producing knowledge across time and space.
Facilitators play a crucial role as knowledge brokers, linking discussions across conference sites.
We identify principles and good practices for advancing equitable, sustainable and impactful conferencing.
The shifting paradigm of knowledge exchange to meet global social challenges
Contemporary global social challenges such as climate change, biodiversity collapse and sociopolitical polarisation are frequently characterised as ‘wicked problems’ due to their complex and interwoven natures, as well as the difficulty of identifying effective responses that meet the needs of the many different groups of beings that they affect (human and non-human alike). Scholars have argued that responding to problems of this order requires, among other things, breaking away from the long-standing primacy we have granted to Western, colonial and techno-scientific ways of framing, studying and responding to challenges (Shove, 2010; Nightingale et al, 2020; Sultana, 2022). Doing so requires meaningful and ‘transformative’ engagement with knowledges, epistemologies and ontologies from a greater diversity of knowledge-holders (Norström et al, 2020). Recent scholarship on transdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge co-production has concerned itself with the question of how to pursue this engagement in ways that are at both just and impactful (insofar as they inform or facilitate new forms of action) across a range of sites and contexts (Byskov and Hyams, 2022; Caniglia et al, 2021; Cundill et al, 2019; Lang et al, 2012). As evidenced through the focus of this special issue, however, the specific methodological practices that can effectively support this engagement remain a matter of debate, and approaches to assessing these practices are very much in their infancy (Plummer et al, 2022).
One long-standing and widely used site of knowledge exchange on global social challenges like climate change is the academic or professional conference. Conferences, whether annual meetings of major scholarly associations, the regular meetings of United Nations climate negotiators, or smaller and more occasional convenings, have long played an important role in sharing, validating and, increasingly, co-producing knowledge within professional peer communities (Hansen and Pedersen, 2018; Chai and Freeman, 2019). As we will discuss, the perceived importance of conferencing spaces extends well beyond this knowledge-exchange function to include defining the community, building and asserting one’s membership within it and nurturing the sociocultural ties that constitute that membership (Zuber-Skerritt, 2017). With the field of research and action on global challenges like climate and sustainability growing exponentially over the recent decades, so too has the body of relevant scholarship and evidence, the range of initiatives under way, and the number of actors seeking to intervene on these issues, thus making the knowledge exchange and community-building functions of conferences all the more important (see, for example, Linnér and Selin, 2013).
However, increasing awareness of the negative environmental impacts of conferencing practices (carbon emissions, food and material waste and so on), and of the inequities that are reproduced and reinforced through these practices, have given rise to calls for new models of conferencing with greater attention to the value that it brings and the costs that it imposes on participants and the wider world (Baer, 2018; Caset et al, 2018; Langin, 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic, which brought most aeromobility to a standstill and forced a radical rethinking of conferencing practices, was a further catalyst of these calls for transformation (see, for example, Schaffar and Beck, 2022; Chasi and Heleta, 2023). As such, academic and professional communities are confronted with a seemingly paradoxical dilemma: how to strengthen and broaden knowledge-exchange practices that may help us to better address pressing global challenges, while dramatically reducing the negative environmental and equity-related impacts that current practices are shown to have.
To explore possible responses to this dilemma, this action research study sought to test an approach to knowledge exchange that might contribute to the sharing of more diverse perspectives, generating new possibilities for action, and yet do so in ways that limit or reduce the ecological burden of the exchange. Specifically, we explored the effectiveness of multi-sited dialogue as a format for facilitated knowledge exchange, by convening dialogue-focused conference sessions at three climate and sustainability conferences over a period of approximately eight months. The multi-sited dialogue approach was inspired in part by the multi-hub conference model (Parncutt et al, 2021), and regional citizen dialogue approaches (for example, Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, 2017) which decentralise conference processes to broaden participation, increase contextualisation and reduce the environmental impacts associated with the convening process. Through the multi-sited character of this convening format, globally relevant knowledge exchanges are brought to participants via iterations of the session in a geographically and thematically diverse set of convening spaces, rather than relying on this diversity to be produced in a single place through air travel. Further, the dialogical character of the knowledge exchange represents a break from more linear models of knowledge transfer (such as oral presentations) that have long dominated conferencing, but limit the range of perspectives shared and may offer limited added value in an era of information overload (Cundill et al, 2024). We describe this process in detail later.
Our analysis focused on three questions, looking first at the facilitation and outcomes of the multi-sited dialogues and then reflecting on the extent to which the multi-sited dialogue approach addressed three dimensions of transformation for sustainable knowledge exchange: equity and inclusion, low-carbon convening and impact. More specifically, the research questions we asked were as follows:
How did multi-sited dialogues contribute to the sharing of more diverse perspectives on sustainable knowledge exchange?
How did the facilitation of a multi-sited dialogue process contribute to the co-production of a more holistic picture of sustainable knowledge exchange across the dialogues?
What principles for advancing equity and inclusion, low-carbon convening and impact in sustainable knowledge exchange were co-produced through multi-sited dialogue process? And to what extent did the dialogues themselves reflect these principles?
We explore these questions and their implications in the sections that follow. We begin by outlining the evolutions in thinking around three dimensions of transformation in sustainable knowledge exchange that serve as the conceptual framework for this study, outlining the way that their convergence creates a paradoxical challenge for the climate and sustainability research, and global challenges research more generally. We then outline the methodological framework and methods used to conduct this action research inquiry. Our findings and discussion section outlines the evidence produced for each of the three research questions and reflects on their significance in relation to multi-sited dialogue as a possible model of knowledge exchange. We conclude by reflecting more generally on how these experiments in new models of knowledge exchange might help transdisciplinary researchers and practitioners build new capacity for navigating the complex global challenges we currently face.
Traditions of knowledge exchange through conferencing: a critical review
As suggested in the opening of this article, critical scholars have increasingly asserted that the connections between academic knowledge production and knowledge exchange and the wicked challenges of climate change and sustainability run far deeper than simply the carbon-intensive travel they generate. Rather, these connections are seen to be directly complicit in the marginalisation and erasure of non-Western ways of knowing, in advancing ahistorical, technocentric and often paternalistic ‘solutions’ to these systemic crises, and of ‘greenwashing’ their own institutional practices (Stein, 2024). This array of academic practices is entwined with often unstated beliefs about whose interests should be prioritised, and whose knowledge is legitimate (Nightingale et al, 2020). Many of these same unstated beliefs, and the unequitable relations that they sustain have, in turn, shaped the practices and priorities of academic knowledge exchange, and may ultimately reproduce many of the same unsustainable practices (Fazey et al, 2013; Cundill et al, 2024).
Building on the contours of this critique and drawing on our own review of how the concept of sustainability relates to knowledge-exchange practices (Brunetti et al, 2022) we propose three critical dimensions for the transformation of knowledge exchange that serve as a conceptual and analytical framework for this article: low-carbon convening, equity and inclusion, and impact (Figure 1). These dimensions sit at the intersection of well-established holistic framings of sustainability (environmental, social and economic) and a more emergent set of priorities identified through a review of recent literature, case-based conferencing practices and experiences of an international participant experiences of climate and sustainability conferencing.
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Three dimensions of transformation in sustainable knowledge exchange
Citation: Global Social Challenges Journal 4, 1; 10.1332/27523349Y2025D000000035
The first dimension, low-carbon convening, acknowledges that sustainable knowledge exchange must seek to reduce the ecological burden it produces through its activities – and those related to air travel in particular. The second dimension, equity and inclusion, is informed by the recognition that spaces of knowledge exchange are not inherently inclusive, but that efforts towards this plurality are essential in addressing wicked global challenges and advancing epistemic justice and transdisciplinary practice as we work to identify problems and pursue solutions. Third, the impact dimension asserts that the time, resources and environmental costs invested into knowledge exchange should result in individual, collective (that is, networks or communities) or wider socio-environmental benefits that extend beyond the acquisition of knowledge and enhance our capacities to act. Similar criteria of successful conferencing have been proposed in recent literature, with Parncutt et al (2021) citing environmental sustainability, inclusivity, motivational character and academic exchange as four criteria – the latter two closely reflecting individual and network-level forms of impact in our framework.
The presence of all three dimensions in a knowledge-exchange process may contribute to a fundamental departure from the oft-critiqued dominant models of academic and professional conferencing we see today, but the inherent tensions between each dimension makes doing so a challenge (Parncutt et al, 2021). Poorly executed efforts to decarbonise conferences by opting for a purely virtual experience, for instance, may simultaneously exclude participants from regions with limited connectivity or with significant time differences, while creating a less engaging experience that does not compel participants to act on what they have learned. We explore each of these dimensions in turn before considering possible avenues for transformation.
The low-carbon dimension
Physical travel that enables face-to-face contact is still largely preferred for transferring complex and tacit knowledge (Bathelt and Henn, 2014; Collins et al, 2022). It is also widely seen as vital in fostering trusting and collaborative relationships (Nilsson and Mattes, 2015; Müller and Wittmer, 2023). As a result, communities of experts and teams invest substantial amounts of time, effort and resources to ensure that the right individuals can be co-located – even if only temporarily. However, travel to and from conference venues accounts for the largest share of conference-related carbon emissions (Hischier and Hilty, 2002; Klöwer et al, 2020).
While a wide range of concerns related to the environmental impacts of in-person conferences have been identified in the literature (for example, Aronson et al, 2024), the discussion around air travel’s contribution to the carbon footprint is the most prominent, particularly for climate and sustainability conferences. Studies have consistently shown that air travel typically accounts for 70–90 per cent of an in-person scientific conference’s total carbon emissions (Hamant et al, 2019; United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 2022; Soliman, 2024). Thus, calls for experimenting with low-carbon alternatives to fly-in, fly-out knowledge exchange has grown. Recently, individual researcher pledges to address their ‘climate hypocrisy’ (Higham and Font, 2020: 1) have also gained traction through movements such as the ‘Stay Grounded’ network and the ‘No Fly Climate Sci’. In affluent (and high-emitting) regions, there has also been a slow but notable increase of institutions proposing measures to address emissions resulting from air travel, including carbon emissions offset programmes (for example, Kreil, 2019; McGill University, nd) and bans on short-haul flights (for example, Radboud University, 2022). However, institutional and professional incentives continue to assign value to fly-in, fly-out conferencing practice (Poggioli and Hoffman, 2022).
The significant shift in behaviours trigged by the COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in the support of replacing air travel with virtual conferencing (Kreil, 2021; Schreuer et al, 2023). As a result, Jack and Glover (2021: 292) call flight-free academic internationalisation an ‘already existing experiment’, while Chasi and Heleta (2023: 605) argue that ‘a return to pre-pandemic practices in the midst of … an existential climate crisis is highly irresponsible, exclusionary and unjust’. Despite these words of caution, the well-documented fatigue with virtual convening practices has led many to call for a return to more in-person interaction.
The equity and inclusion dimension
The dominant conferencing model of flying hundreds or thousands of delegates to a conference venue, often being hosted in exclusive and high-priced hotels and resorts, has long been criticised for its lack of inclusivity and accessibility. Long-distance travel privileges able-bodied participants as well as those who do not need to manage care-related responsibilities (Henderson and Burford, 2020; Henderson and Moreau, 2020). Visa and passport inequities largely impact low- and middle-income country citizens as well as refugees and asylum seekers, while travel bans restrict delegates from specific countries (Nicolson, 2018). The high costs of airfare, transportation, lodging, registration and meals also contribute to exclusion.
The social dynamics of conferencing practices themselves have also been critiqued for their exclusionary effects, often seen as reproducing many of the inequities of academic and professional work environments themselves. These dynamics relate to inequities around turn-taking in speaking roles (Hinsley et al, 2017); the forms of formal interaction and exchange that are prioritised; and the unwritten conventions of informal spaces and interactions (Oliver and Morris, 2020). Consequently, international conferencing norms often exhibit gender-, class-, race- and/or age-based disparities in participation and representation (Gay-Antaki and Liverman, 2018; Wynes and Donner, 2018; Albayrak-Aydemir, 2020).
Although much has been said about virtual conferencing lowering barriers to conference participation, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic (for example, Sarabipour et al, 2021; Wu et al, 2022), growing evidence reveals that these benefits may not be experienced equally, and that virtual conferencing formats may instead be shifting rather eliminating forms of exclusion. For instance, the inability to fully engage in the conference experience as a virtual participant can exacerbate socio-economic and gender inequalities and exclusion (Black et al, 2020). The digital divide continues to inhibit bandwidth-intensive activities like videoconferencing (Niner et al, 2020; Kim et al, 2022). Delegates from some parts of the world are also excluded from virtual participation due to platform licensing and privacy measures imposed by different countries (Raby and Madden, 2021). Additionally, virtual conferences may reproduce the same forms of linguistic, discursive and epistemic privileging that have been shown to present barriers to inclusion in more traditional formats. Hence, regardless of their convening format, transforming conferencing norms necessitates careful consideration of the existing inequities, inequalities and power imbalances, and an exploration of how the benefits produced through participation can be shared equitably (Chasi and Heleta, 2023).
The impact dimension
Our third dimension, impact, refers to the individual and collective outcomes that are envisaged from conferencing or other forms of knowledge exchange, that enhance our ability to act. This framing is tied to evolving debates about what constitutes ‘impactful’ scholarship, including growing assertions that simply producing research findings for academic publication and presentation is no longer a sufficient aim for publicly funded research, and calls for expanded notions of impact that consider benefits to policy, practice and partnership, among others (Bornmann, 2012; Oswald et al, 2016; Huang et al, 2024a). In the context of international conferencing practices, some argue, this should include impacts that bring benefits not only to participants and their networks or institutions, but also to local-level actors in the communities where conferences are hosted (Huang et al, 2024b). Impacts of this nature become particularly salient when faced with the lack of any correlation between conferencing air travel and increases in traditional metrics of academic productivity such as total citations or H-Index score (Wynes et al, 2019; Chalvatzis and Ormosi, 2020).
Evidence suggests that promoting these forms of impact depends, in part, on moving beyond conferencing practices that are centred upon one-directional knowledge transfer. Studies have documented the impacts generated though building learning communities (Zuber-Skerritt, 2017; Spilker et al, 2020), supporting transdisciplinary engagement (Schroeder and Lovell, 2012; Kuyper et al, 2018) and jointly shaping research and policy agendas (de Melo Romão et al, 2017; Oester et al, 2017) through processes of knowledge co-production, for example. Despite this evidence on the value of more dialogical and co-productive modes of knowledge exchange, de Vries and Pieters (2007) find that conferencing practices continue to focus on information dissemination, even when there are formal and informal opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogues. Given the reach and accessibility of online technologies for performing this dissemination task, this finding casts further doubt on the added value of fly-in, fly-out conferencing focused on knowledge transfer. As Pierce (2014: v) ask, ‘is this a waste of our resources to hold these meetings? … After all, we could be using Skype to transmit our information to our audience at a fraction of the cost of travelling to a meeting somewhere around the world’.
The dynamics surrounding conferencing practices reveal a complex interplay between low-carbon, equity and inclusion, and impact dimensions of knowledge exchange. These tensions reveal themselves at different levels of the conference experience, from individual sessions to the overall design of the conference, highlighting the need for a nuanced and holistic approach to address them. With this in mind, we join the search for alternatives by considering how a multi-sited dialogue model can help to tackle the three dimensions of transformation for sustainable conferencing.
Methodological design and its significance
The goal of this study was to explore the potential of multi-sited dialogues as an approach to co-producing knowledge in conference spaces using the three dimensions of transformation we have described as a conceptual and analytical framework. This section sets out our methodological design for the study as well as the design of the multi-sited dialogues themselves.
Methodological approach: participatory, multi-site action research
The research and dialogue processes that informed the study findings aimed to simultaneously (1) identify principles and barriers to more equitable, low-carbon and impactful models of knowledge exchange, and (2) pilot a model of conferencing practice that might advance some of these principles. To do so we adopted a participatory action research (PAR) methodology, a process through which groups work together to study and transform the ways they interact in a shared social world (Kemmis and McTaggart, 2008). Bradbury et al (2019: 7–8) have described action research as ‘a pragmatic and timely response to unsustainability’ given its capacity to engage with our experience, help us learn as whole learners, and build our capacity to take transformative action. This makes it particularly well-aligned with the focus and aims of the work we sought to undertake.
Our methodological approach invited people attending each of the multi-sited dialogues to reflect upon, share and identify ways of improving conferencing practices (as participants, hosts and facilitators). In keeping with the ethics and principles of PAR, we sought to be transparent and inclusive by involving participants within sessions to take a direct role in documentation and sense-making processes, providing transparency about participant contributions from past convenings and facilitation/author team’s sense-making process between sessions, and leaving open possibility to take on a deeper role in the research process across dialogues (Altrichter et al, 2002). Consequently, and as is often the case with PAR (Burns et al, 2012), the research followed an iterative design process, using cycles of action and reflection within the research process to refine the process as we progressed. This iteration is perhaps best evidenced through the gradual expansion of the facilitation team that coordinated the research process within and between events – with Bruce and Nick joining the facilitation and author team after the first dialogue session, and consequently, to refinements in the ways that each dialogue was facilitated and documented.
Further in line with PAR principles, the lines of distinction between researcher and participant were blurred throughout the process. Each of the authors of this study also served as process facilitators in at least two of the three dialogues and were active participants in the co-production process at each dialogue, while participants were directly engaged in the analysis of past results as we moved from session to session. While this lack of separation between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’ may be critiqued from more positivistic research standpoints, advocates of participatory and action-oriented methods have long advanced alternate conceptualisations of rigour that better reflect the epistemic and axiological commitments that they hold. Chambers (2015) proposes the concept of inclusive rigour, in which rigour is not assessed by the researcher’s adherence to standards of scientific process, but rather by their ability to accommodate the diverse and complex perspectives being advanced by all study participants. Within such a framing, processes like collective sense-making, real-time data processing (often with visual aids), member cross-checking and researcher reflexivity become the means of advancing and testing the rigour of a process (Chambers, 2015). This framing of rigour informs the principles we sought to uphold.
The study’s multi-sited nature differs from many PAR initiatives, which have tended to be context-bound and site specific, but past research and theory building on multi-site action research (MSAR) has also highlighted its potential to generate insights that may extend beyond those generated by single site initiatives. More specifically, MSAR approaches are seen to have the potential to strengthen the quality of research at individual sites, expand the overall impact of the research through the comparative and collaborative dimensions of the process, and open up the possibility of more effective coalition-based action research (Fuller-Rowell, 2009). The success of MSAR, according to Fuller-Rowell (2009) depends on having a common issue of focus, and some level of coordination across sites. In the case of this study, the three action research sites consisted of the three conference sessions, while the common issue of focus was set out through the use of a consistent session description and framing presentation defining the proposed point of departure for the dialogue, and the cross-site coordination was ensured through the presence of a common set of session convenors tasked with summarising evidence accrued at previous sessions. Our use of MSAR for a sequence of dialogues occurring over a period of many months differs from the cases of concurrent MSAR described in Fuller-Rowell’s (2009) study, and we reflect on the implications of this difference in the analysis that follows.
Study design: research sites, participants and data collection
Each of the three dialogues took place in the context of an international conference on climate and/or sustainability and each hosted a different set of participants (see Table 1). Participants at each conference represented a mix of researchers, practitioners, students and, to a lesser extent, policy makers. The different conference locations influenced the participant profile at each event, with stronger representation from each of the three host regions (South Asia, Europe, North America).1 Each dialogue took the form of an official conference session titled ‘Towards new models of knowledge exchange for sustainability transformations: a multi-sited dialogue’ which had been submitted and reviewed for acceptance. The session titles and description were nearly identical across all three conferences to ensure consistency in the process, and the multi-sited nature of the process was clearly identified. Each session was promoted through its listing in the conference programmes and, to maximise participation, through posting of information flyers on social media platforms using conference-specific hashtags. Given the format, participation was entirely voluntary and was limited to registered conference attendees who elected to join our session instead of other concurrent sessions.
Session overviews and rates of participation
| Dialogue 1 | Dialogue 2 | Dialogue 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conference name | Gobeshona Global Conference 3 | Transformations Conference 2023 | Adaptation Futures 2023 |
| Dates | 10–16 March 2023 | 12–15 July 2023 | 2–6 October 2023 |
| Host organisation(s) | International Centre for Climate Change and Development, Bangladesh | Transformations Community (Int’l); UTS (Australia); CzechGlobe (Czechia) | Ouranos, Canada |
| Conference format | Virtual | Multi-site, hybrid | Hybrid |
| Conference URL | https://conference.gobeshona.net/ggc3/ | https://www.transformationscommunity.org/transformations-conference-2023 | https://adaptationfutures.com/ |
| Session format | Virtual | Virtual | Hybrid |
| Participants (including the authors) | 12 | 10 | 24 (in-person) + 4 (online) |
| Total # of segments contributed by participants | 51 | 18 | 79 |
Data collected for this study were largely qualitative in nature and were derived from two main sources. First, we examined participant contributions and boundary objects co-produced through each of the three dialogues that were convened.2 Boundary objects included physical flipcharts, digital whiteboards and chat transcripts where examples were shared among participants. These data provided insight on the extent to which new voices and perspectives were shared over the course of the three dialogues and, if so, how that diversity contributed to a substantively different cumulative understanding of how forums for knowledge exchange can be made more equitable, inclusive, low carbon and impactful. Second, we examined facilitation plans, session resources (background notes, white board templates and so on), and debrief notes from intra- and post-event reflections produced over the course of the three dialogues. These data provided insight into the ways that the session designs and facilitation processes informed the co-production that occurred, the ways that intra-dialogue knowledge synthesis shaped the subsequent and end-point results of the multi-site dialogue.
Dialogue process design: convening structure and facilitation approach
The multi-sited dialogue approach developed for these three sessions was an iterative yet progressive process of knowledge co-production (Figure 2). The overarching aim was to co-produce a set of principles, built from participant experiences, that could provide guidance on ways of transforming knowledge-exchange practice. To do so each dialogue session featured three common process stages:
Framing: an introductory presentation to frame the challenge in question (described earlier), introduce and discuss the three dimensions of transformation for sustainable knowledge exchange we have adopted; and describe the session format.
Exploring: an interactive stage where participants populated the three-dimensions model (Figure 1) with their own experiences and perspectives. Across the three events we invited participants to share barriers to practice that they had encountered, models of good practice and emergent principles of practice that might be shared more widely. This was done in facilitated breakout groups using interactive tools (digital whiteboards like Google Jamboard and Mural online, and flipchart paper and sticky notes in-person) to enable more dialogue between session participants. To avoid the risk that technological proficiency became a barrier to contribution, participants were also invited to simply share their thoughts in the event chat window, or orally and a member of the facilitation team would ensure that their contribution was captured and posted.
Consolidating: a plenary exchange to identify and cluster common themes emerging from the group discussions and reflect collectively about the emerging principles.
Visualisation of the multi-sited dialogue process design
Citation: Global Social Challenges Journal 4, 1; 10.1332/27523349Y2025D000000035
Despite these common stages of dialogue and co-production across all three events, the iterative nature of the dialogues involved changes from event to event (see Figure 2). These changes were largely planned and initiated by the authors/facilitators. Beyond the initial framing presentation to initiate each session and a brief synthesis of what had been contributed in previous dialogues, points of emphasis also evolved. More specifically, participants at the first event (Gobeshona 3) were encouraged to prioritise identifying barriers and examples of good practice, with less focus on emerging good principles given the early stage of the process. At the subsequent dialogues participants were invited to focus more on identifying principles, with participants at Adaptation Futures 2023 being invited to review the existing list of barriers and principles, adding to the list only if they felt there were important gaps, and then to focus predominantly on translating these into emerging principles. The team never made suggestions in relation to a focus on one or more dimensions of the framework, however. This facilitative approach to ‘knowledge cumulation’ (Newig and Rose, 2020) across the sessions responds to the common critique that knowledge exchange in conferencing is fragmented and often repetitive with the same ‘lessons’ being learned, forgotten, then relearned from conference to conference (Skelton, 1997; Jacobs and McFarlane, 2005). It also elevates the co-production process from an event-specific undertaking to a multi-sited process, with the facilitation assuming a knowledge brokering role to help key ideas move from one dialogue to the next (Fazey et al, 2013; Knight and Lyall, 2013).
Empirical insights from within, between and across dialogue sites
Here we analyse results related to both individual dialogues and well as across the three-dialogue multi-sited process to better understand the cumulative contribution of this approach in line with our research questions. Given our emphasis on appraising the contributions of the multi-sited dialogue process we do not seek to catalogue all participant contributions to these dialogues, but rather to explore how the process may have diversified the perspectives shared, examine the contribution that the facilitation process had on those contributions, and assess the alignment between the process and key principles that were co-created by participants across the three sessions.
Diversifying contributions through multi-sited dialogues
Critiques of traditional academic and professional conferencing have pointed to their exclusionary effects through both their design (that is, who can attend) and their format (that is, who feels welcome to contribute). With pluralism being a cornerstone of transdisciplinary sustainability research (Isgren et al, 2017), this exclusion presents a direct barrier to both equity and impact dimensions of knowledge exchange. As such, our first research question asked whether (and how) multi-sited dialogues contributed to the sharing of more diverse perspectives on sustainable knowledge exchange. To answer this, we coded participant contributions from each of the three sessions3 and reflected on how these contributions, coming from different times, places, and participant groups, broadened the range of experiences and insights shared.
Dialogue 1 was held at Gobeshona Global Conference 3, which was convened virtually but hosted by Bangladesh’s ICCCAD and featured a strong representation of South Asian speakers and participants.4 As already noted, the 51 total participant contributions at this session focused predominantly on barriers (28.57 per cent) and good practices (67.35 per cent) due to its timing as the first dialogue. What stood out strongly at this session, however, was the emphasis on barriers to low-carbon convening (64.29 per cent of all barriers identified) and equity and inclusion (35.71 per cent), with limited attention to the impact dimension of the framework. Contributions focused on the limitations of virtual conferencing formats in terms of attracting and retaining an audience, enabling social interactions and promoting meaningful inclusion, perhaps reflecting participant experiences at the fully virtual event itself. For instance, one participant described a ‘two class system in hybrid conferences between in-person and virtual participants’ (D1-12) as a barrier to advancing inclusive, low-carbon participation. Participants also highlighted the importance of language supports, local contextualisation and facilitation support to enable broad and inclusive participation. Many of the examples of good practice shared were of specific tools and resources, for enabling virtual exchange and tracking emissions, among others.
Dialogue 2, at Transformations 2023, began with a review of Dialogue 1 contributions, and yielded a significantly different range of inputs, with emphasis on equity and inclusion (44.44 per cent of contributions) and impact (33.33 per cent) surpassing sustainability considerations by a significant margin. Most noticeably, 75 per cent of barriers identified in this dialogue were impact-related, compared to none in Dialogue 1. In the facilitation team’s session debrief, we noted that participants at this event were more cautious in posting new contributions (18 total versus 51 in Dialogue 1) and often did so in response to contributions that had been made by participants at Dialogue 1. For instance, contributions from Dialogue 1 relating to low-carbon convening highlighted the low level of engagement and buy-in among virtual attendees at conferences. Discussion of these barriers was then deepened in Dialogue 2 with contributions highlighting the need to acknowledge and work with the inherent limitations of virtual tools (D2-5), and suggestions around specific tools or methods (for example, arts-based methods) that may help to address these challenges.
The focus on impact, largely absent in Dialogue 1, surfaced strong ties between the forms of interaction and partnership-building made possible in some conferencing formats as key enablers of good practice (D2-8, 10, 15), and the challenges of reproducing such a sense of emergence within online and hybrid environments (as barriers; D2-2, 3, 6, 7). One participant noted, for example, the tendency in online conference contexts to ‘focus on our “presentation” rather than on engagement and connection with peers’ (D2-3). That these comments emerged at a hybrid and multi-sited conference series that places significant emphasis on collaboration and co-creation,5 in a session where participants were simultaneously experiencing the enablers and barriers being mentioned, suggests how the context of the knowledge exchange may have informed the nature of the discussion.
Through this sequence of two dialogues we begin to see how inter-session exchange was emerging, not only as a form of dialogue-to-dialogue knowledge cumulation but also as a form of ‘weaving’ where individual strands of knowledge contributed retain their integrity but are interwoven with new distinct strands that create a ‘fabric’ of understanding (Tengö et al, 2017). Importantly, what also emerged from Dialogue 2 was a diversification of contributions about the forms of exchange and actors to engage in them. New references to arts- and theatre-based approaches to knowledge exchange (D2-7), valuing and accommodating the presence of both active participants and passive listeners (D2-11), and calls to make space for non-human beings, such as nature, as agents in the exchanges (D2-6) provide evidence of this diversification, which is crucial to transdisciplinary engagement.
Dialogue 3, at Adaptation Futures 2023, hosted the largest number of dialogue participants and generated the greatest number of contributed segments (total of 79). It was also the only dialogue that was held predominantly in-person with a smaller proportion of participants (~14 per cent) joining virtually. At the prompting of the facilitation team, contributions focused more on articulating emerging principles rather than barriers or good practices. In reviewing participant contributions, we see a further ‘balancing’ of total contributions occurring across the three dimensions of equity and inclusion (36.14 per cent), impact (33.73 per cent) and low-carbon convening (26.51 per cent). We also see a further expansion of the forms and dynamics of exchange, and the range of practices identified as being important for fostering equity and inclusion. For example, attention was called to the importance of being conscious of the many forms of diversity in the room (D3-18), and of building trust empathy and solidarity between participants (D3-34, 43, 46). In terms of the impact dimension of sustainable knowledge exchange, the importance of connecting with local knowledge and experience was repeatedly emphasised (D3-12, 38, 40, 41, 48, 49), reflecting the more ‘localised’ nature of an on-site conference for this dialogue. Additionally, contributions related to the enablers of good practice for the low-carbon dimension, which had focused on virtual conferencing tools at Dialogue 1, shifted in emphasis towards regional (D3-30, 31) multi-sited (D3-10) and smaller ‘node’-based (D3-11) in-person convenings, alongside a range of proposals for reimagining hybrid events. Again, we see direct parallels between the context in which the dialogue sessions were hosted and the diversification of issues and possibilities put forward.
In sum, although we could not collect participant data disaggregated by gender, ethnicity or other forms of social difference to assess the diversity of contributions according to participant identity markers, we see strong evidence of how the multi-sited dialogue expanded contributions both in terms of number of contributions and in diversity of focus. Over the course of the three dialogues, we see how each event retained its own areas of emphasis (Figure 3), but also observe that the emphasis from one event became interwoven with responses, additions and counterpoints emerging from subsequent dialogues. We also see perspectives that were absent at one dialogue (for instance, consideration of non-human perspectives in knowledge exchange) brought into the dialogue process in subsequent gatherings. Finally, we see clear connections between the focus of many participant contributions and the conference contexts from which they were made. While further research is required to fully explore this observation, it does suggest that the contextual plurality afforded by the multi-sited approach contributed to a diversification of the perspectives shared.
Breakdown of participant contributions by session
Citation: Global Social Challenges Journal 4, 1; 10.1332/27523349Y2025D000000035
Facilitation effects on knowledge co-production in multi-sited dialogues
Having argued that the multi-sited dialogue approach supported a diversification of insights and perspectives through expanded participation, an inter-session ‘weaving’ of insights and responses, and more diverse convening contexts from which experiences were being shared, we arrive at closely related second question: is this expansion merely the result of more dialogues across different sites involving more participants? Or, has the design and facilitation process used for multi-sited dialogues played a role in shaping a more holistic view of sustainable knowledge exchange?
The facilitation process, described in the section ‘Dialogue process design’, included framing each session through an opening presentation, guiding the group interaction and supporting the use of web-based tools, and consolidating and re-presenting the previous sessions’ participant contributions to serve as a point of departure for the subsequent dialogue. Despite providing this synthesis of previous contributions, we did not invite participants to focus their inputs on any one dimension of our proposed framework (that is, equity and inclusion, impact, low carbon) more than another. On the other hand, we did encourage a progression from identifying barriers and good practices to sustainable knowledge exchange in the first dialogue towards the identifying emerging principles that captured what participants saw as the key insights of the three sessions (Figure 3). Better understanding the effects of this process may help us assess its effectiveness promoting knowledge co-production and in mitigating concerns regarding fragmented and repetitive knowledge exchange in conferences.
First, the facilitation team’s guidance, which encouraged a progressive focus on emerging principles across the three dialogues led to 0 per cent of contributions being principles at Dialogue 1, 17.65 per cent at Dialogue 2 and 54.32 per cent at Dialogue 3. This is unsurprising given the specific guidance provided, but it does demonstrate that participants across the three dialogues were responsive to facilitator prompts within the co-production process despite being offered no strong incentive to do so.
Second, we looked at the distribution of cumulative participant contributions across the three dimensions of our framework. Figure 4 reveals a convergence of contributions across the three dimensions over time with the final distribution across all dialogues and contribution types being 35.27 per cent for equity and inclusion; 27.13 per cent for impact; and 37.21 per cent for low carbon.6 From this figure we see how the accumulated inputs from participants increasingly balanced themselves across the three dimensions over the course of the three dialogues, despite no facilitator prompting to that effect. This suggests that a more holistic reframing of sustainable knowledge exchange emerged from the co-production process across the series of dialogues. Specific participant contributions from Dialogue 3 such as ‘rethinking the conference from an event to a journey’ (D3-51) and ‘moving from one-time conferencing to community building’ (D3-16) are, to some extent, descriptive of the more holistic reframing.
Participant contributions accumulated across dialogues
Citation: Global Social Challenges Journal 4, 1; 10.1332/27523349Y2025D000000035
Finally, we note an additional potential impact of the facilitation team’s practice of synthesising and resharing contributions. In doing so we sought to share back the points of common focus and convergence within and across dialogues. This meant that ‘outlier’ contributions which did not reflect the overall focus of the dialogues were lost, though they may have represented unusual perspectives that enriched the overall exchange.
In sum, the facilitation process does appear to have affected the flow and progression of the co-production process assisting in a gradual consolidation and refinement of ideas across contexts. However, many of the dynamics we observed across the series of dialogues (the weaving of perspectives, the gradual evolution towards a more balanced set of contributions across the three dimensions of the framework) were unprompted and indeed unforeseen by the facilitation team. While this may be partly attributable to more subtle forms of facilitator influence, it may also be the product of contextual co-production dynamics. Future research could delve further into how such dynamics emerge across multi-sited processes.
Emerging principles for sustainable knowledge exchange
Our final research question asked what new insights on equitable, impactful and low-carbon knowledge exchange were actually co-produced through the multi-sited dialogue process, and whether the process itself reflected these principles. Table 2 provides the current iteration of what is anticipated to be a ‘living document’ of principles and good practices synthesised by the author team based on the full set of participant contributions as well as multi-sited dialogues’ areas of alignment with these principles.
Insights on three dimensions of sustainable knowledge exchange co-produced through the multi-sited dialogues
| Dimension | Critical barriers | Good practices +emerging principles | Practices applied during dialogues |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equity and inclusion | Lack of capacity support for under-represented groups | Offer support services for new, underserved participant groups | • Offered limited translation support (French/English) • Process facilitators in each breakout group to support participant engagement |
| Take proactive action on equity and inclusion (for example, EDI event policy guiding acceptance, funding, format decisions) | Conference-level principle | ||
| New convening formats produce new forms of exclusion (for example, in-person to virtual/hybrid) | Identify how different types of privilege (for example, passport, time zone, finance, technology) intersect and affect specific groups | • Offered transcription/translation for participants new to virtual tools • Hosted dialogues in different regions to reach a more diverse set of participants |
|
| Adapt convening formats to different engagement needs | • Adapted interactive tools to in-person/virtual participants in Dialogue 3 | ||
| Low carbon | Limited transportation alternatives to air travel | Move from one-time conversations towards multi-sited dialogues | • Multi-sited dialogue format reflected this principle |
| Negative online conference experiences lead to abandoning innovations | Raise awareness of the environmental impact of conference travel | • Session focused on low-carbon knowledge exchange sought to raise this awareness | |
| Low perceived benefit from virtual engagement | Invest in promoting and sustaining virtual engagement (build virtual engagement into conference design) | • Pursued through session focus and commitment to facilitated virtual/hybrid formats for each dialogue | |
| Impact | No space for emergence and serendipity | Undertake community-building work before, during and after events | • Evolving facilitation/analytic team created avenues for deeper engagement |
| Limited attention to conference contributions to positive societal impacts | Reflect more explicitly on how participants can/will move from knowledge to action | • Commitment to sharing and applying outcomes of the analysis | |
| Maintain open accessibility of legacy conference data and knowledge products | • Publishing open access blog and article summarising process and outcomes | ||
| Plan for engagement with host communities | • Conference-level principle |
For the equity and inclusion dimension, a synthesis of contributions related to barriers highlights participants’ views that under-represented groups face important hurdles to participate effectively in knowledge exchange, and that the shift to low-carbon formats may ultimately produce new forms of exclusion. This yielded four emerging principles that highlight the need to: better understand participant needs and barriers to participation – including cases where participants face intersecting forms of exclusion; designing events and individual sessions with these needs and barriers in mind; and ensuring there are support services in for underserved groups when they do participate in knowledge exchange. Among the barriers specifically cited in individual contributions, included language differences (D1-1); financial barriers (for both in-person and virtual convenings; D1-13); time-zone difference (D3-4); and access to specific technologies for virtual participants (D3-2). In reflecting on the multi-sited dialogue process and how it attended to these principles, we saw how the role of process facilitation that also offered transcription (of spoken interventions for participants uncomfortable using web-based tools), translation support to participants and hands-on guidance on using web-based tools helped to address some barriers. The geographical distribution of the sessions also may have reduced some of the financial, time-zone and travel-related challenges. Conversely, however, we had limited influence over who could participate in the conferences themselves, the time of the session or the financial aspects of the knowledge exchange (such as registration fees).
The key barriers identified for the low-carbon dimension present a more complex picture of the ‘flyer’s dilemma’ (Higham et al, 2014), where sustainability scholars and professionals must seemingly choose between contributing to growing CO2 emissions through air travel, participation through a virtual format that is widely seen to offer limited benefit, or simply not participating. Principles that were identified to help address this dilemma include decentralising knowledge-exchange processes (through multi-sited events); investing in a better integration of virtual convening into ongoing knowledge-exchange practices to increase its perceived value; and making the implications of these choices clearer to would-be participants. More specifically, participant contributions reflect a view that low-carbon alternatives to in-person conferencing have failed to live up to participant expectations (D1-17; D2-5; D3-43), and that the desire to feel connected to people, land and community represents a powerful set of motivations that must be better understood and attended to (D2-11; D3-40, 68). We begin to see here how action in one priority area (for example, by increasing the inclusiveness of virtual convenings through some of the supports described earlier) could have a positive effect on other dimensions of our framework, such as increasing the perceived value of virtual participation. Again, many of the decision points relevant to the low-carbon dimension of our framework sit beyond the reach of individual conference sessions, making strong alignment with the principles here a challenge for session facilitators.
The final synthesis of the impact dimension focused on the need to foster connection and emergence between participants, as well as with extended communities. Four principles were identified. The first proposes a shift from treating conference planning as ‘event’ planning and instead as community building, which includes thinking about building community connections before, during and after events (D1-36; D3-29, 57, 62). Second, adopting a stronger impact orientation to planning knowledge exchange calls on organisers and hosts to envision how the exchange creates pathways to further action (D2-10; D3-65). Finally, ensuring the impacts of the knowledge exchange extend out beyond those who are in attendance involves making the evidence presented or co-produced available to those who could not attend, and committing to engage locally (in the case of in-person events) with groups whose work addresses similar challenges (D3-38, 48, 49, 64). The multi-sited dialogue method tested here is of particular relevance to the first two of these principles, where the iteration across events, and engagement of event conveners across the events supported community building and near-term use of results in practice.
A number of insights emerge from this synthesis and reflection. First, we see a strong resonance between the experiences and concerns of participants who helped to co-produce these principles and those articulated within the wider literature. This speaks, in our view, to the persistent and widespread nature of these issues, but also to the potential value of the principles for informing conference design. Second, while it is clear that much of the work around sustainable conferencing and knowledge exchange must occur at the level of the conference event itself, and that some actions can only occur at that scale, there are still valuable practices that can be adopted at the level of individual conference sessions across all three dimensions of the framework. The impact that can be achieved through changes at the scale of individual sessions is far more limited than transformations to an entire conference process or design but may nonetheless provide a modelling effect that has wider repercussions. Pursuing action at both event and session scales strikes us as a promising path to impact. Third, while the nature of this particular dialogue lent itself to a strong alignment with the principles that were co-produced, challenges still remain. The unpredictable nature of session participation in traditional conference formats makes it difficult to undertake community building in advance of the session, to anticipate the types of participant support that may be needed, or to align the process with participants’ priorities for action. Finally, a number of these recommended practices are contingent on institutional and systemic factors that are beyond the control of conferences themselves. All too often international conference venues and service providers create prohibitive cost and policy structures that restrict the use of tools and technologies that would enable inclusive and low-barrier interactions. Understanding how these under-examined actors play crucial roles in the transformation of knowledge exchange and conferencing practices has emerged as an important area for future study.
Conclusions
This study has used participatory, multi-sited action research to pilot and explore the merits of multi-sited dialogues as a convening and facilitation method for sustainable knowledge exchange. The aim was to address the equity and inclusion, low-carbon and impact dimensions of the conferencing process. We find that, as piloted, the method enabled knowledge co-production across both time and space thereby expanding the range of perspectives and contexts that could be brought to bear on the questions under discussion. This led to concrete differences in both who was heard and what was shared, which is critical for inclusive and transdisciplinary exchange. Ultimately, even though the process was largely the same from dialogue to dialogue, the conversations were not. The author/facilitation team for this process acted as knowledge brokers within and between events in ways that helped to draw clearer linkages within and across the dialogues, sometimes experienced as a cumulation of knowledge and at times a more complex weaving of perspectives and understandings across events. Despite the important role of facilitators in sustaining the multi-sited process, participant buy-in within and between events is all the more crucial. The result of the three dialogues is captured in a table of principles and good practices that highlight opportunities for transformed practice at the scale of individual sessions, entire conferences as well as in the wider conferencing system, which includes venues, service providers and policy makers. This means engaging with the economics and politics of conferencing in order to fully understand the barriers to transformation.
Looking beyond the primary focus of the inquiry, our analysis also suggests that the multi-sited dialogue approach to knowledge co-production may also represent a valuable means of navigating complexity and engaging in collective systems thinking, processes that are crucial for advancing sustainability transformations (Senge et al, 2015). Through our analysis we see how the multi-sited dialogue process generated a holistic view of the challenge under study, fostered through an emergent co-production process. By emphasising the iterative and reflexive dimensions of the process, we built in feedback loops between events that allowed us to adapt the design as the process evolved. These process features resonate strongly with commonly held principles of both complexity and systems thinking. Future research could assess the extent to which this represents a significant new contribution to other existing approaches to transdisciplinary knowledge co-production.
Notes
The open nature of participation in the sessions, with participants self-selecting to join, and at times joining late or leaving early, made collecting detailed participant data unfeasible without risking disruption of the dialogue.
Boundary objects are objects or ideas produced or used by group members in collaboration settings which serve as a focus for exchange. This includes maps, timelines, flipcharts and so on. They are seen to allow members of different groups to find common ground and work together even prior to achieving consensus (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2014).
References to specific contributions in this discussion use the following coding system: the ‘D’ prefix identifies which dialogue session the segment came from (for example, D1, D2, D3). The numerical suffix specifies the individual coded contribution.
The remaining 0.39 per cent of the inputs were coded as ‘other’ because their meanings were challenging for the researchers to interpret within the context of the three dimensions. Examples included contributions such as ‘inspiration’, ‘imagination’ and ‘creativity’.
Funding
This work was supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (Grant #109596-001), Mitacs Accelerate (Grant #IT27701), and Mitacs Elevate (Grant #IT32105).
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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