Research Monster Roulette. Facilitating multidisciplinary and cross sector collaborations.
date. 2018 and ongoing
city. Lancaster
Facilitating a sandpit for The Centre for Mobilities Research CeMoRe
I have spent long time in my career thinking seriously on ways of knowledge production and exchange, exploring the design of methods and tools for collaboration, and facilitating dynamics of cross-sector collaborations and community engagement.
The Research Monster Roulette, is an example of these co-design tools. I used it to facilitate an annual day away with CeMoRe. The aim of the day was to match researchers that did not necessarily know each other well, with calls for funding for multidisciplinary projects. The roulette allows the creation of "research monsters" by changing and mixing heads, bodies and legs to create a critter that most represent research interest (head), research body or past work, and new directions to explore (legs).
Each researcher created their own critter avatar, and introduced to the group, making the awkward moment of self introduction more engaging and memorable. The tool also worked to shake some of the hierarchies that in academia so often get in the way of horizontal collaborations.
In The Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at The University of Bristol where I teach to multidisciplinary classrooms, I have developed further these sorts of dynamics and tools around the premise: how to make collaboration and participatory research impactful and meaningful using creativity and humor.
