ABSTRACT
Literatures on social innovation, collective agency and multi-actor collaboration stress the importance of action research and joint problematization to research ongoing processes of collaboration and transformation to advance both theory and practice in these fields. In this paper we analyze our experience building a transdisciplinary action research (TAR) trajectory between 2020 and 2021 to investigate socially innovative multi-actor collaborations (IMACs) and urban governance innovation trajectories in the city of Leuven (Belgium). We specifically focus on (1) how we involved a wide array of researchers, stakeholders and practitioners in the TAR trajectory;(2) how we enacted joint problematization and action, ensuring that all facilitative leadership roles were taken care of;(3) the challenges that the specific COVID context posed on TAR and the innovative tools and approaches we took to adapt under such circumstances;and (4) how our TAR contributed to the ongoing IMACs in Leuven. Discussing our experience in relation to issues raised in action research literature, we summarize key dimensions, roles and tasks necessary in TAR to enable facilitative leadership and multi-actor collaboration and successfully drive joint problematization and transformative change. We conclude that our TAR trajectory in Leuven became a case study of IMAC in itself, and so learnings from our TAR directly dialogue with and inform our empirical analysis of the performance of IMACs too. Through this realization and the analysis of our experience, we get to broader question the role of action research and researchers in urban governance innovation.
ABSTRACT
Resilience is of paramount importance in dealing with a prolonged pandemic such as COVID-19, in which all countries inevitable suffer through multiple stages of adversity. Many Asian countries were initially hard hit by the pandemic, but some of them displayed the remarkable ability to withstand these shocks, overcome despair, and bounce back quickly. This special issue examines two aspects of resilience building in policy responses to crises such as COVID-19 - capacity development and governance innovation. Capacity can be a key factor in determining the effectiveness of health emergency preparedness, surveillance, response, and recovery systems for unprecedented public health crises like COVID-19, and governance innovation also plays a key role in resilience building by strengthening the roles of non-government actors in public health crises, the efficacy of science-policymaking interactions, and the uses of disruptive technologies.