{"id":624,"date":"2025-02-04T17:38:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T17:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/arip\/?p=624"},"modified":"2025-10-31T10:09:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T10:09:48","slug":"rgs-ibg-call","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/arip\/rgs-ibg-call\/","title":{"rendered":"RGS-IBG Annual Conference: Call for contributions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Manoj Roy<\/a> (Lancaster University), Roger Pickup<\/a> (Lancaster University) and Suresh Kumar Rohilla<\/a> (University of Bradford) are submitting a proposal for an organised session at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference<\/a>, University of Birmingham, UK, 27\u201329 August 2025. The session will be entitled Publishing through the community: Advances in interactive research on informal sanitation<\/strong> and a call is currently open for abstracts. There is potential for this to be hybrid session (online & in-person).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Submission information<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Please email abstracts of 250 words by 21st February 2025<\/strong> to m.roy1@lancaster.ac.uk<\/a>, r.pickup@lancaster.ac.uk<\/a>, or s.k.rohilla@bradford.ac.uk<\/a>. The abstracts could describe academic papers\/ artistic products (drama, videos, etc.) that will be presented\/ shown\/performed. They will get back by 28th February 2025 with acceptance decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Session overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It builds on a forthcoming publication series by IWA Publishing on this theme. Selected contributions to this session will \u2018visualise\u2019 how their work interacts with and transforms the understanding of the community (broadly defined) in real\/ proximate time. Visualisation could be artistic, analytic, or narrative. Authors will have an opportunity to publish in the IWA series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conceptually, as this WHO [1] slogan (No research about us without us\u2026) implicates, knowledge production must capacitate the knowledge bearers. This tradition of \u2018involving lay people\u2019 in research marks an \u2018interaction turn\u2019 in knowledge production [2]. The meaningful participation of various social actors as ‘subjects of knowledge’ introduces a richer representation of the issues and their possible solutions. This process can address three concerns of development research: a democratic (lay people have the right to participate), an epistemic (legitimate interlocutors capable of influencing epistemic\/methodological definitions), and a knowledge reproduction and add-ons (they are capacitated to interpret conditions, changes, and responses to problems).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thematically, over a billion people globally currently rely on informal sanitation [3], and their number is increasing at a rate faster than the rise in access to basic sanitation [4]. There are four persistent issues concerning informal sanitation: collective action challenge, coproduction challenge, challenge of affordability vs acceptability, and challenge related to tenure [5]. Given such intractability, informal sanitation issues are a \u2018wicked\u2019 problem [6]. Research must approach informal sanitation differently to optimising the benefits of research on the people, places, and processes that directly contribute to the research. The growing trend of locally led strategies by research institutions [7] is an opportunity to advance the interaction turns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guiding questions<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

These are suggestive; other pertinent questions are welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n