5. Critical reflection

Geoengineering raises many complex questions that span a wide range of
academic disciplines. Overarching our interdisciplinary IAGP research
has been an element of critical reflection, led by Maia Galarraga from
the Sociology Department at Lancaster University. Maia has worked with
the other members of IAGP to reflect upon how and why we have approached
our research in the way we have, and what the implications may be for
further geoengineering and interdisciplincary research.

IAGPs' reflective work has been about understanding in practice
what happens when different kinds of knowledge are brought together in service
of a shared goal. Rather than flattening the difference between different kinds
of knowledge, or ignoring the difficulties of bringing them together, IAGP
has engaged with fundamental epistemological and ontological questions
that are raised by trying to bring together the engineering, natural and social
sciences. What does it really take to do interdisciplinary, publicly informed
science? What kind of knowledge should we be generating? What constitutes
appropriate knowledge?  Against often overly positive and smooth accounts
of interdisciplinarity, IAGP has sought to confront these important questions
as a necessary element of the production of robust technical and
social-scientific knowledge.

Publications