Talking Collaboration: Conceptualizing Collaborative Research for Sustainable Development in Theory and Practice

Cross-collaborations and interdisciplinarity have become buzzwords in academia as it has been identified and argued, that going beyond traditional academic boundaries is essential for providing solutions to complex, societal problems. Currently, most of the scholarly literature on collaboration focusses on sub-issues, such as arguments for and against the crossing of fields and disciplines, while there is a lack of practical case studies exemplifying its effect. The objective of this research was therefore to explore the arguments underlying initiatives to start an introductory collaborative program for young academics, identify these programs’ roles in the researchers' collaboration capacity, and thus, to gain understanding of how collaborative programs can contribute in the process of equipping young researchers with valuable tools to tackle today's and tomorrow's complex challenges linked to United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. The research for this thesis was done in two steps: (1) to search for a conceptual framework on the topic of research collaboration, and (2) presenting a single-case study of one example of a collaborative research enhancing program by conducting qualitative interviews with key respondents. This thesis explicitly includes an assessment of current theories on the development of collaborative and interdisciplinary research teams and the relevance of these for enhancing scientific capacity of innovation, effectiveness and progress. It concludes that collaborative research is an ambiguous and fluid concept. Although concepts and theories around this phenomenon have been proposed, there is no coherent consensus on the concept in the scholarly literature. Furthermore, the case study presented in this thesis offers a unique insight into young researchers’ experiences of participating a collaborative research program. It is recognized that there is a consensus among the persons interviewed that participating in a collaborative research program has greatly contributed to the individual researcher’s professional development. It is further recognized that the lack of standardized indicators for collaborative outputs implicates on the possibility to argue for the proposed benefits of collaborative research in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals