NSF Award
2419014
Motivated by a growing recognition of the importance of community-engaged research, the goal of this project is to assist researchers, ecological restoration practitioners, and community partners in navigating how to co-author and share research findings in ways that are relevant, useful, and culturally reflexive. The project grows from the collaborative Indigenous Led Ecological Restoration (ILER) project (NSF-BSC #2117652) and is co-led by non-Tribal university scholars and Blackfoot scholars and partners, including 5 Tribal Elders and Piikani Lodge, a Blackfeet-led environment and health nonprofit. The project asks: (1) What are the obstacles to ethical co-authorship with Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners, and how can these best be addressed? (2) What practices and models of collaboration enable ethical and effective co-authorship? (3) More specifically, what does ethical co-authorship look like in ecological restoration research? In answering these questions, the project supports equitable ecological restoration research and addresses gaps in institutional research ethics around co-authorship. Broader impacts include: guidelines for best practices in ethical co-authorship; opportunities for Blackfoot partners including students to engage in co-authorship; and co-written outputs that apply different models of co-authorship to support Blackfoot-led ecological restoration. The project promotes the progress of ecological restoration science, advances national wellbeing by supporting equitable scholarship, and broadens participation in STEM by supporting research and authorship opportunities for Tribal and early-career scholars.<br/> <br/>This project engages in scholarly debate on institutional research ethics and Indigenous-engaged research, knowledge co-production, and ecological restoration to advance understanding of the foundations of ethical and responsible co-authorship among Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners. We address this through two major research objectives: 1) To better understand the dynamics of ethical and responsible co-authorship with Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners in general and in the field of ecological restoration; and 2): To translate these into guidelines for IRBs and ecological restoration research. Our research approach combines standard methods of interviews and dialogue on co-authorship with experimental methods in which we apply and evaluate different models of co-authorship. The project produces generalizable findings on ethical co-authorship and collaborative knowledge production and provides concrete insights into best practices. <br/><br/>This project is jointly funded through the ER2 program by the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, the Directorate for Biological Sciences, and the Directorate for Geosciences.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
