The Research Group focus is on exploring and enabling Learning and Innovation (L&I) processes to support just, sustainable and healthy farming and food systems, societies, economies and environments across local-global scales. Innovations may be technological, social or institutional. Learning includes transformative, social and interactive.

Within this overall scope, Research Group interests and activities encompass: learning and innovation theory and practice; actors involved in the learning and innovation processes – citizens and consumers, research and academia, state, private sector and civil society; current and desired innovation and learning processes aiming to achieve various just and sustainable food systems and societal outcomes; and factors influencing these outcomes – views and values of stakeholders, policies, governance and institutions, and power relations.

We seek to use inclusive and responsible engagement processes to explore these issues.

Current research themes

• Understanding how change happens - Learning and innovation in transformative change processes; learning and innovation post-SDGs.
• Tools, methods and framings – learning approaches; approaches to scaling, understanding trade-offs.
• Brokering knowledge systems – multistakeholder engagement approaches in food systems transformation; epistemologies including citizen and local knowledge.
• Monitoring, evaluation, learning and planning – evaluation of innovation, advocacy planning.
• Systems thinking - environmental decision-making and cognitive neuroscience.
• Ethics of technological innovation – democratising knowledge; governance of innovation; social dimensions of ICTs.