Collaborative Research: Event Ethnography of the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity

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IntroductionThis collaborative project involves an international team of researchers from several universities that will undertake a Collaborative Event Ethnography at the 10th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan, over 10 days in October 2010. Such meetings are sites or moments of negotiation and decision-making in on-going, broader policy-making processes, and they provide opportunities for researchers to examine how ideas about conservation emerge, gain traction, and are contested, debated and traded-off against one another.Intellectual MeritThis research probes the processes involved in determining what conservation is, who participates in such processes, and with what consequences. Researchers will engage in ethnographic research practices modified to reflect the untraditional nature of meetings as field sites. A collaborative team is better able than individual researchers to capture the dynamics of meetings and to address crosscutting themes. The proposal builds on experiences with and lessons learned from the first Cognitive Event Ethnography, undertaken at the 4th World Conservation Congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in 2008.Potential Broader ImpactsThe core researchers will recruit a diverse team, including researchers from different disciplines, countries, genders and ethnicities. The diversity will serve to broaden participation in STEM areas. As a collaborative effort among multiple universities and across disciplines, the project will also serve to build and strengthen partnerships.