Broad theme with more specific sub-themes:

• The group likes that the title is broad.
• The word “transformation” is about the tensions between certainty and uncertainty / what we know and don’t know, how these things are disrupted during transformation, and what happens in moments of uncertainty as a result. 
• The word “Understanding” opens up different methods for thinking about issues, whether qualitative, quantitative, historical, contemporary. This makes “Understanding” an interesting and useful descriptor in the title. 
• “Transformation” implies something positive. We sometimes work on topics where things happen which we wish didn’t, so the word “transformation” allows for an activism that opens up positive changes in difficult/challenging research topics. Thinks that “Understanding” is possibility too passive.
• What constitutes ‘transformation’. This will differ between fields. How do we understand, theorized, historical, etc the idea or action of transformation? When and where is transformation? Also, continuities and for whom? Is the transformation over time and for individuals, institutions and societies? Sometimes transformations do not happen equally. 
• It will be important to understand how this theme is different to Theme 1: Area Studies, Global Inequality and Economic Development.
• Consider framing the theme as “Understanding Diversity: Racial, Ethnic, Social Cultural” with respecting diversity as the entry point for research in this area.

More specific sub-themes could focus on:

1. Direct engagement with policy and impact:

• How do we as academics impact the polarization that is increasing in society?
• How have people living/existing within traditional modes of power - economic, socially, culturally - cope with the challenges to their power that is erupting in lots of different ways currently?
• How is the tension, generated by that space, respected and not reduced to moral relativism? How can we move forward where people are coming from very different perspectives and world-views without sinking into those ideologies?
• What can we do to achieve economic, cultural, social transformation?

2. Engagement between qualitative and quantitative methods: traditional ways of working keep researchers in disciplinary silos. Would like to see more exchange/interdisciplinary engagement where researchers come together who are working on the same topic but use different methods to explore it, both at the research and impact levels. 

3. Exploratory research: While making social change is aspirational, there should also be a room or a gap between research/understanding/not immediate and activism/impact/action to allow for further research. Sometimes the most effective impact comes from research that might appear arcane/historical/may not seem relevant. 

Link up with Historical Legacies of the Past/Historical Transitions theme: Worth thinking about current and future transformation. Topic also invites past transformations as well.

Knowing Who’s Who:  Who is out there to contact? What are other researchers doing? Who is involved in what? A mapping exercise would be useful. Someone did a mapping exercise with all researchers involved with Net Zero which was extremely useful. Not knowing who does what [meaning academics] is an internal barrier to networking. 

Understanding Diversity can only be achieved by enabling disciplinary approaches to discuss topics that affect development and reproduce inequalities. It is an understanding of this diversity, with broad theoretical perspectives that can help us to bring marginalised knowledges at the forefront of research. It is by disrupting current practices that we can generate meaningful change.

The group though that the title was broad, multidisciplinary and open to interpretation, which was also reflected in the range of research areas of those attending the session.  his was considered a positive, but that it also had its limitations for pulling together a cohesive focus for the theme.

The group was very clear on not wanting to duplicate existing initiatives. Concern was also raised on the use of the phrase ‘human development’ as in some disciplines this reduces the theme’s ambiguity because it has particular resonances within their field of research (e.g., UNDP human development goals). Further conversation on definitions of learning and development raised similar concerns, but was concluded that the theme did not take an either/or approach, there was scope within to examine both the negative and positive connotations associated with multiple meanings/interpretations.

Possible sub-themes

It was suggested that the theme might be reframed as ‘Technology, Knowledge and Human Experience’ with subsets of different kinds of technology, including digital technology, and Human Development that included environmental knowledge, health and wellbeing.   

Digital Technologies

This was the dominant focus for the technology aspect of the theme, including:

• How digital technologies can be used as tools for creative learning
• The use of professional learning intervention tools (Perspective Technologies)
• Augmented reality simulations
• low-tech, including Zoom production
• Digital technologies and ‘deschooling’ – with knowledge always at the fingertips through the world wide web, there is also the question of what to do with it.  

Existing Technologies

The use of technology in the theme title opens up a multitude of meanings, even if digital technology is the dominant focus. 

• The group highlighted the intellectual risk of only focusing on new technologies, which are often positioned as more interesting or important, and excluding the study of existing technologies. 

• Possibly a useful function for this group to look at existing technologies within specific research areas – i.e. medical, ethical, legal and social issues.

Critical Analysis of Technology

The group also suggested that critical discussions around technology could be another avenue for the theme to distinguish itself from existing research groups. 

• Examining the relationship between technology and knowledge – how do they influence each other in a non-linear way? How does this challenge or advance ideas of human development?
• How can this type of reflective analysis offer something that is different from the University-wide research strategies/priorities and the anticipated outcome of large thematic grant applications?  Specifically in the context of digital technology and AI?
• How can the group collectively push back on some of those expectations and focus on creating spaces for broader discussions?

Skills

The group found that the idea of skills was a very interesting and useful way of approaching the intersection of knowledge, technology and human development/experience. Another possible route to distinguish this theme from existing research groups.

• Ethnoscience and the study of indigenous knowledge and indigenous knowledge has been valued at least since the 18th century but has always been categorised as skill only and as the knowledge of how to and not proper knowledge/science. Digital technologies are shifting those hierarchical distinctions. 
• The idea of what counted as reading, which is a skill or literacy or a knowledge depending on whom you're asking, that idea had to be constantly contested as it was deeply embedded within existing social power structures, who controlled the cannon, literature, content, venues for access to pre-reading work.

Setting out a Research Framework for research priorities has been quite broad in order to be inclusive.  The flexibility of funding across the themes would mean roughly £10k a year/per theme.  There are certainly more people in the School doing work that would be under this rubric and their input might help identify useful ways of using this available funding.