STARTcast

Episode two of the STARTcast features a conversation between START’s Dr. Mary Thompson-Hall and Dr. Ed Carr, Professor and Director of the International Development, Community, and Environment Department and of the Humanitarian Response and Development Lab at Clark University. Ed also serves as an Adviser on Adaptation for the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel, of the Global Environment Facility. Here, Ed shares about his experiences with convening successful, diverse research teams and what he sees for the future during a time of increasingly virtual interactions.

In Episode 4, the Season 2 finale of the STARTcast, we discusses the FRACTAL Principles with John Mfune, Deon Shekuza, Lapo Magole, and Genito Maure.
The FRACTAL Principles are an outcome of FRACTAL’s transdisciplinary processes. As the emergent Principles became clear, they helped to shape and guide engagements in the nine southern African cities where FRACTAL worked. They sum up the way in which FRACTAL approached working in these cities and it is hoped that they can provide a framework for future transdisciplinary projects.

In Episode 3 of the second series of the STARTcast, Mzime Murisa, a Program Specialist at START, discusses the role of embedded researchers in the FRACTAL project with Rudo Mamombe, who was the Embedded Researcher in Harare, Zimbabwe. In her discussion she also includes comments from Dr Anna Taylor, Dr Lulu van Rooyen and Brenda Mwalukanga.

Season 2 Episode 2 features a discussion between FRACTAL’s program coordinator, Alice McClure, and three FRACTAL researchers:

• Dr. Anna Taylor, researcher at the University of Cape Town focusing on climate adaptation in cities, particularly developing a process-based understanding of how urban climate adaptation happens, is organized and governed;
• Dr. Sukaina Bhurwani, an interdisciplinary senior researcher with a background in social anthropology and computer science. She co-leads the Stockholm Environment Institute’s Climate Services Initiative and weADAPT platform;
• Dr. Gilbert Siame is a senior researcher who heads the Centre for Urban Research at the University of Zambia. He was integrally involved in the design of transdisciplinary research in Lusaka and across FRACTAL more generally.

Anna, Sukaina and Gilbert share their wealth of experiences from the learning lab approach and FRACTAL processes. They explain the concept of the labs and how these were engendered as collaborative spaces where stakeholders could come together, identify, define and co-explore burning issues as well as create solutions to the complex issues.

Season 2 Episode 1 features a discussion between START Program Specialist Dr. Mzime Ndebele-Murisa and three prominent climate scientists from the FRACTAL project: Dr. Chris Jack (Deputy Director at the Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG), at the University of Cape Town, South Africa); Dr. Richard Jones (Science Fellow at the UK Met Office and a visiting professor at Oxford University); and Dr. Tamara Janes (Researcher in atmospheric sciences, monsoons and climate change adaptation).

Together, these four focus on ‘climate distillation’ and narrative approaches used during the FRACTAL project to ensure climate information was both relevant and usable. The conversation explores decision making contexts, trust building and strengths and weaknesses of using Climate Risk Narratives (CRN) to co-produce relevant, plausible climate information and to communicate uncertainties in the climate data.