De-disciplined: A Q-study on how artists, scientists and technologists experience collaboration as a creative inter/transdisciplinary practice

Filmmaking is a creative practice. However, what do we mean when we use the term ‘creative practice’? This chapter explores the terms ‘creative’ and ‘practice’ by examining what has been called the creative system in action (McIntyre et al., The Creative System in Action – Understanding Cultural Production and Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Drawing on the research literature from psychology and sociology, a link to ‘filmmaking’ will be made through media and cultural production scholarship (McIntyre, Creativity and Cultural Production: Issues for Media Practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.). Using examples from independent documentary filmmaking (Kerrigan, Using Fort Scratchley (DVD), Fort Scratchley. Australia: PhD Productions, 2008; Journal of Media Practice, 14(2), 111–127, 2013) and fictional television serial production, this discussion will illustrate how creative filmmaking practices are aligned with confluence models of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity. In R. Stenberg (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity, Cambridge (pp. 313–335). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), group creativity models and staged creative process theories (Bastick, Intuition, How We Think and Act. Chichester/New York: Wiley, 1982; Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: HarperCollins, 1996). Examining the complexity of the daily choices made by the conditioned agent, in this case a filmmaker, the discussion will focus on the decision-making process of factual and fiction filmmaking and how it connects to creative practice (Kerrigan in McIntyre et al., The Creative System in Action – Understanding Cultural Production and Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). This will necessarily involve the methods and processes used by the filmmaker, as they develop an intuitive approach to their practice which becomes embodied knowledge that enables them to work within a collaborative, social and cultural system. This scholarly approach to the term ‘creative practice’ will provide an understanding of how a filmmaker can apply work from other disciplines to bring new insights to ways of regarding filmmaking as a creative practice.

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) systems illustrate various ways and means of natural resource utilization and management, which has come into being through keen observations as well as the age-old trial and error methods. However, such knowledge systems are gradually eroding due to various reasons. Proper documentation, characterization, scientific validation, and popularization of such knowledge systems would help in preserving them for posterity. The present study characterizes the ecological attributes of a traditional rice farming system called Asra in Karimganj district of Barak Valley, Assam. The objective was to investigate the water properties and community composition of plankton and rice stem epiphyton of the water logged Asra rice field agro-ecosystem. The substantial contribution of Asra rice field ecosystems in maintaining the overall biodiversity of the system has been highlighted in the present study. The study revealed the presence of 77 genera of phytoplankton and 55 genera of rice stem phyto-epiphyton, which belonged to six major classes viz., Bacillariophyceae, Chlorophyceae, Cyanophyceae, Euglenophyceae, Xanthophyceae and Zygnemophyceae. Besides, 29 genera of zooplankton and 14 genera of rice stem zoo-epiphyton belonging to five major groups viz., Protozoa, Cladocera, Copepoda, Ostracoda and Rotifera were also recorded. The study shows that the Asra rice fields are rich repository of plankton and rice stem epiphyton, the natural live food resources for fish. The study emphasizes on conservation of traditional farming system like Asra, and stresses on the need for sustainable utilization of the existing bioresources in such system by introducing the concurrent practice of rice-fish culture in the study area.

The debate on African Indigenous knowledge systems and their link with African cultural practices and belief systems has elicited serious debates. The colonial administrators and their Christian missionary associates viewed African traditional or Indigenous knowledge and educational systems as unscientific, illogical, anti-development, and ungodly. This jaundiced view of African knowledge systems must have informed the apparent neglect of research on African education and cultural belief systems. This is in spite of the fact that the 1997 Global Knowledge Conference in Toronto, Canada, urged people to urgently learn, preserve, and exchange Indigenous knowledge. In Africa, Indigenous education is culture based on the methods and means of instruction used by different societies to impart their values and mores with the aim of attaining their societal/culturally specific visions, goals, and aspirations. For the Igbo, the latter statement is very true as evident in some of the proverbs, witticisms, aphorisms, and adages about education and culture. These bodies of knowledge emphasize conscious and refined methods of acquisition, and dissemination of knowledge of societal values, philosophy, and hermeneutics. Given these merits, it would be germane for serious scholarly research to be conducted among the Igbo, who of all in current context appear to be more “Catholic than the Pope” among other ethnic groups of equal standing in Africa. Anchored on the qualitative method of research, and field investigations, the present study intends to interrogate the nexus between cultural practices, belief systems, and education in traditional African society using Igboland as a case study. Questions to be addressed include but are not limited to, how was knowledge transmitted in preliterate Igbo societies, are those strategies still relevant, if not what are the options available? If relevant, how do we incorporate them to suit present realities?

Human functioning and rehabilitation research can be organized into 5 distinct scientific fields. The objective of this paper is to provide conceptual descriptions and to outline selected research domains for 4 of the 5 distinct scientific fields. A conceptual description of the biosciences in rehabilitation and the presentation of respective research domains are beyond the scope of this paper. The research domains of the human functioning sciences can be identified and described according to the generic research process, which involves theory building and observation. The according domains include theory and models of human functioning, classification and measurement of functioning, functioning epidemiology and functioning impact assessment. The research domains of the integrative rehabilitation sciences can be identified and described by drawing on the public health approach. They include rehabilitation services research, rehabilitation intervention research and rehabilitation administration and management. There are many conceivable research domains within the realms of the biomedical rehabilitation sciences and engineering. They are often defined in relation to an organ system or in relation to an intervention approach. The research domains of the professional rehabilitation sciences are well established and include professional standards and guidelines for the provision of best care, rehabilitation quality management, scientific education and training of professionals in rehabilitation, and development and evaluation of the rehabilitation team.

This chapter expands on the study of what has been called Everyday Creativity (Richards 2007; Glaveanu 2014) to contribute to a creative poetics of the new everyday in which we increasingly live. In the current mix and mash of multiple polycultural interchange, identity plays, ubiquitous media, sweeping migration patterns, and conflictual enactments, it is now crucial to explore how multiple everyday rituals, meanings, social signals and values are created and how we create practices that reciprocally impact both individual and collective psyches and institutional structures. The chapter begins with an exposition of the daily creativity of young children emphasizing their play, wonder, and continual exploration, alone and with others. It emphasizes a “pre-production” stage of experimentation in which the usually thought of background plays with feeling, sensation, movement, and sound are foregrounded as practices of renewal, of both individual and collaborative creativity. The chapter continues by looking at the complex roles of media, books, schooling, games, and contact with people from a multiplicity of cultural backgrounds in creative possibility in the new daily landscapes, and it ends by giving examples of initiatives that employ new practices of everyday creativity, both individual and collective, in a variety of sociocultural settings.

Research data management is essential for safeguarding and prospecting data generated in a scientific context. Specific issues arise regarding data in image format, as this data typology poses particular challenges and opportunities; however, not much attention has been given to data as images. We reviewed 109 articles from several research domains where images were used either as data or metadata to understand how researchers specifically deal with this data format, and what are your habits and behaviors. We use the Web of Science (WoS), considering its five main areas of research. We included in the initial corpus the most relevant articles by research domain, selecting the ten most cited articles in WoS, by year, between 2010 and 2021. The selected articles should be in English and in open access. The results found that images have been used in scientific works numerous times, but, unfortunately, few are those in which they are the central element of the study. Photography is the type of image most used in most domains. In terms of the instruments used, the Technology and Life Sciences and Biomedicine domains use the microscope more, while the Arts and Humanities and Physical Sciences domains use the camera more. We found that the images are mostly produced in the context of the project, rather than reused by third parties. As for their collection scenario, these are mostly produced/used in a laboratory context. The overwhelming majority of the images present in the articles are digital, and only a small part is analog. We verify that Arts and Humanities are more likely to perform qualitative types of analyses, while Life Sciences and Biomedicine overwhelmingly use quantitative analyses. As for the issues of sharing and depositing, Life Sciences and Biomedicine is the domain that stands out the most in the tasks of depositing and sharing images. It was found that the licenses of a project are intrinsically related to the motivations for sharing results with third parties. Description, a fundamental step in the data management process, is neglected by a large number of researchers. The images are mostly not described or annotated and when this happens, researchers don’t provide much detail about this.

This chapter examines the different routes of policy engagement open to theatre practitioners, and puts forward the proposition that there are two primary forms of conscious engagement in policy activity: that which is invited through official channels of consultations and the ‘uninvited’ participation that is the result of practitioners’ own self-directed activity. It also emphasises the importance of the connections amongst the various actors involved in the field of new playwriting policy and discusses key issues about the make-up and operation of these networks. The argument is made that the networks cross boundaries of policy and creative practice, with links being made among theatre practitioners and between practitioners and arts funders that weave together both creative collaborations and policy activity. It suggests that theatre practitioners’ engagement in these networks increases their opportunity for policy input and influence.

Interdisciplinary research has been attracting more attention in recent decades. In this article, we compare the similarity between scientific research domains and quantifying the temporal similarities of domains. We narrowed our study to three research domains: information retrieval (IR), database (DB), and World Wide Web (W3), because the rapid development of the W3 domain substantially attracted research efforts from both IR and DB domains and introduced new research questions to these two areas. Most existing approaches either employed a content‐based technique or a cocitation or coauthorship network‐based technique to study the development trend of a research area. In this work, we proposed an effective way to quantify the similarities among different research domains by incorporating content similarity and coauthorship network similarity. Experimental results on DBLP (DataBase systems and Logic Programming) data related to IR, DB, and W3 domains showed that the W3 domain was getting closer to both IR and DB whereas the distance between IR and DB remained relatively constant. In addition, comparing to IR and W3 with the DB domain, the DB domain was more conservative and evolved relatively slower.

“If you want to see the sign of the times, watch women. Their evolution is the most important thing in modern life." (Editorial, 1912b). This statement, delivered as part of a speech to the Drama League in Boston in 1912, was made by leading American playwright, Rachel Crothers. Crothers’ statement is representative of a social phenomenon in late nineteenth century America wherein the economic transformation and flourishing industry of the Progressive Era opened the way to previously unattainable educational and professional opportunities for women. The focus of this thesis is on gender equality, business negotiation and creative collaborative working practices on Broadway as viewed from the perspective of the business and writing partnerships of three lyricist/librettists: Anne Caldwell (1867-1936), Rida Johnson Young (1875-1926) and Dorothy Donnelly (1880-1928). They collectively wrote a total of more than forty musical productions, of which twenty were outstanding successes in the twenty-two-year period from 1906-28, for which (during their lifetimes) they received both critical acclaim and significant financial reward. The burgeoning industry in which all three writers were operating was also a fledgling environment with regards to contractual rights for writers, the collective support of Guilds and Unions gaining steady ground through the early years of the twentieth century, their goals often resisted by powerful producers who viewed regulation as a threat to profits. This interdisciplinary research draws on primary source correspondence, interviews and Language Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) analyses to build profiles of male/female collaboration as part of a linguistic-hermeneutic paradigm for observing negotiation, networking and collaboration in business and creative partnerships. The findings contribute further to Caldwell, Johnson Young and Donnelly’s respective profiles within the early musical theatre landscape on Broadway, creating new perspectives around creative collaboration and the importance of networking and highlights a model of non-gender biased commercial equality pertinent to the ongoing gender pay gap dialogue in the present day.

Natural resource management issues in developing countries are increasingly mimicking western theories and the contribution of indigenous cultures and institutions are often overlooked. This research examines the role traditional belief systems and indigenous knowledge and practices have played in the management and conservation of natural environmental resources in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Some cultural practices and belief systems like sacrifices, worship, the Tindaanaship organization and the Tingaane civilization and how the Tindaanas (chief priest) communicates through the Tingaane (shrines and sacred groves) to the ancestral spirits or gods, how the people are punished if the gods are provoked were examined. The study revealed that the significant attribute of the belief systems that rest on the ascription of supernatural powers to some parts of the environment as the home of the gods has significantly helped to conserve the natural environment. The protection of these homes/areas from utilization, exploitation and use explicitly encourages conservation of environmental resources. Forbidden areas and totemic items/objects associated with worship immensely promoted conservation of resources. Over the years, traditional belief systems, practices and indigenous knowledge strategies that conserve the natural resources have been eroded or corroded by western cultural infiltration and religion. The study recommends a re-visitation of the traditional belief systems and cultural practices that promote the management, preservation and conservation of natural resources for the sustainable development of the Upper East Region and the nation at large.

This paper investigated science as a systematic knowledge used for discovery of the world, observation, test and presentation that entails validated facts, and how technology, which is adjudged to be using scientific knowledge for excecution of things at factory or industry with the use of tools is evidently ingrained in certain Yoruba cultural practices like farming, blacksmithing, sculpting and African power in Yoruba Egungun (masquerade). Several scholarly works abound on culture, science and technology, but little or nothing is established to address insuniation that lack of scientific or technological knowledge in Yoruba culture is responsible for economic and political backwardness of the people. Effort to ascertain that scientific and technological knowledge is present and real in Yoruba culture is what the paper out to proove. Cultural theory and theory of the sociology of literature in which Hyppolite and his disciples are one of the proponents is adopted for its capability to offer explicit information on culture as product of the society whose main function is to reflect the same society in the same way literature does. Secondary data were collected from books, journals, social media and unstructured interview with four resourceful elders at Ogbomoso on certain scientific/technological knowledge observed in some Egungun masquerades. Findings revealed that scientific/technological knowledge is well ingrained in Yoruba culture before the advent of the Europeans. It was revealed also that the secreet behind the entrenchment of scientific/technological knowledge in Yoruba culture is hidden and known only to very few individuals, hence, the reason for negative insinuation in some quarters that there is no iota of scientific/technological presence in the culture and the assumption that there is economic and political backwardness is not tenable. It was recommended that scientific/technological power ingrained in the culture should be codified and shared because ‘a knowledge shared is a knowledge retained’. Government should provide financial supports for the traditional practitioners to discover and promote more scientific/technological knowledge embedded in the cultural practices of the people.

Language plays a huge role in promoting relations between people. Mother tongue, in particular, is regarded as a key element in communicating culture, familiarity, social status and cultural identity. As Nelson Mandela once said, ‘If you talk to a man in…his language, that goes to his heart.’ Mother tongue, therefore, brings about a sense of belonging and identity since when people communicate in their mother tongue, they are able to acknowledge their roots and appreciate the history of their existence. Mother tongue brings about the unique and distinct identity of an individual through the names and naming systems, artistic skills, knowledge systems and cultural practices that the individual adopts. Despite the numerous benefits of using mother tongue in promoting culture and identity, the evolution of culture in the contemporary world has acted as a hindrance to the use and growth of mother tongue. In many places in the world, popular languages have been held more highly compared to the mother languages and people have resulted to restricting the use of their mother languages to ritualistic functions. Language genocide is becoming more popular when people forego their own mother tongues and adopt other languages fully. The result of language genocide is the complete disappearance of languages. Efforts have been put in place to redeem the glory of mother tongue language. For instance, the International Mother Language Day (IMLD) adopted in 2000 to be celebrated every 21st day of February. People from all over the world have been able to use this day to explore the significance of mother tongue languages as well as to come up with ways through which mother tongue language can be sustained despite the current trends of language in the world.

Beni-Amer cattle owners in the western part of the Horn of Africa are not only masters in cattle breeding, they are also knowledge sovereign, in terms of owning productive genes of cattle and the cognitive knowledge base crucial to sustainable development. The strong bonds between the Beni-Amer, their animals, and their environment constitute the basis of their ways of knowing, and much of their knowledge system is built on experience and embedded in their cultural practices. In this book, the first to study Beni-Amer practices, Zeremariam Fre argues for the importance of their knowledge, challenging the preconceptions that regard it as untrustworthy when compared to scientific knowledge from more developed regions. Empirical evidence suggests that there is much one could learn from the other, since elements of pastoralist technology, such as those related to animal production and husbandry, make a direct contribution to our knowledge of livestock production. It is this potential for hybridization, as well as the resilience of the herders, at the core of the indigenous knowledge system. Fre also argues that indigenous knowledge can be viewed as a stand-alone science, and that a community’s rights over ownership should be defended by government officials, development planners and policy makers, making the case for a celebration of the knowledge sovereignty of pastoralist communities

Indigenous geological knowledge (IGK) constitutes a vital but often overlooked dimension of Earth science, developed through centuries or millennia of community observation, cultural practice, and direct interaction with the environment. In Ethiopia, a country characterized by diverse landscapes, active tectonic zones, and rich cultural heritage, local communities have long interpreted geological phenomena such as rock formations, mineral presence, volcanic eruptions, and groundwater signals through context-specific, place-based knowledge systems. Despite its profound potential in geoscience, natural resource management, and environmental education, IGK remains marginalized in mainstream scientific discourse, institutional policy, and formal education. This review critically examines the scope, depth, and contemporary relevance of IGK in Ethiopia by analysing traditional interpretations and their linkages to current geoscientific challenges. A systematic review approach was used, following PRISMA guidelines. Data were gathered from academic databases (Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar) and grey literature, using search terms like ‘Indigenous knowledge,’ ‘geology,’ ‘Ethiopia,’ ‘traditional geoscience,’ and ‘ethnogeology.’ Inclusion criteria covered studies published from 1995 to 2025 that document local geological interpretations, geophysical phenomena, or traditional resource-use practices. From an initial pool of 311 documents, 50 were selected for full thematic analysis. The findings reveal five core thematic areas: traditional rock and soil classifications; local understandings of volcanic and seismic activity; Indigenous hydrogeological indicators; perceptions of land degradation and erosion; and cosmological or spiritual associations with geological features. These knowledge systems are intricately woven into community identity and environmental stewardship, often passed down orally across generations. IGK offers valuable insights for enhancing geoscientific research, supporting sustainable land use, and developing culturally grounded education. Integrating IGK into formal scientific frameworks can also strengthen disaster risk reduction and environmental governance. This review calls for inclusive academic platforms and responsive policy frameworks to validate, preserve, and integrate Indigenous geological knowledge within Ethiopia’s broader development agenda.

Cultural landscapes represent the intersection of natural and cultural heritage, encompassing the physical environment as well as the cultural practices, traditions, and values associated with a specific place. These landscapes often have important socioeconomic and community dimensions, serving as centers of livelihoods, tourism, and community identity. Moreover, these landscapes have intrinsic value and contribute to the overall diversity and richness of our global heritage. They hold stories, knowledge, and traditions that connect us to our past and shape our collective identity. Climatic and anthropogenic hazards pose significant risks to these landscapes, including the degradation or loss of cultural heritage sites, changes in traditional land-use practices, and the erosion of cultural identities and knowledge systems. To understand and evaluate these potential impacts, helping to safeguard and preserve the cultural significance and integrity of these landscapes, it is necessary to identify the specific risks and vulnerabilities that cultural landscapes face, allowing for the development of targeted adaptation strategies, enabling proactive measures to mitigate the impacts and ensure the resilience and continuity of these landscapes for future generations. One widely adopted tool for risk assessments are Impact Chains [1], i.e., cause-effect models that describe the relationship between a hazard (e.g., a storm surge, a heatwave), exposed elements (e.g., residents, birdlife, agricultural practices) and their vulnerability (e.g., dike maintenance practices), and resulting impacts (e.g., coastal erosion). Impact Chains are composed of all these elements and additionally, intermediate impacts, i.e., cascading effects related to hazard and vulnerability elements. Impact Chains are typically developed through participative processes that involve local stakeholders. These stakeholders provide valuable input and feedback for the development of the Impact Chain. The validated Impact Chain provides a structured representation of the cause-effect relationships associated with the investigated risk. Until now, Impact Chains have mainly been used as a basis for indicator-based Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessments from the national to the local level, but not for modelling anthropogenic hazards like over-tourism or the abandonment of agricultural practices. In addition, only few Impact Chains for cultural sites have been developed. In this contribution, we present Impact Chains that have been developed for five cultural landscapes as part of the Horizon Europe project RescueME (GA No. 101094978) and cover both climatic as well as anthropogenic hazards. These Impact Chains have been developed within case studies of the island of Neuwerk in the Waddensea of Hamburg (Germany), the Huerta and Albufera de Valencia (Spain), the Defensive System of the City of Zadar (Croatia), the region of Portovenere, Cinque Terre and the Islands (Italy), and the UNESCO Geopark in Crete (Greece). This contribution will describe the co-creation process for Impact Chain development, the involved stakeholder types, as well as the adaptations made to the standard Impact Chain representations [1].