Transforming Research: Storytelling, Reflection, and the Power of Reimagining Academia
ModulesTransforming Research: Storytelling, Reflection, and the Power of Reimagining Academia
By the end of this micromodule, researchers will be able to:
1. Explain the concept of transformative research—including how research can contribute not only to knowledge production but to societal change.
2. Describe the PePe framework (Pluralizing, Empowering, Politicizing, Embedding) and its relevance for advancing more just and impactful research practices.
3. Apply the Pepe framework to their own research practices and systems.
4. Critically evaluate their role as researchers, including ethical responsibilities, boundary work, and potential influence on change.What is this about?
Listen to the podcast
Listen to the podcast
Watch and reflect: transformative research
The course described in the podcast titled “Transformative Research for Sustainability Challenges”, was born out of interviews with 71 researchers about how their work connects to societal transformation.
What emerged was a striking tension: while many researchers had high aspirations for the societal impact of their work, their day-to-day practice often fell short of those ideals.
The course supports PhD candidates to question assumptions, build solidarity, and explore new ways of doing research.
As Josephine puts it: “We’re so trained into certain ways of doing research and thinking that that’s legitimate.” The course encourages participants to reflect not just on what they study, but on why they do it—prompting questions like:
What are your values? What do you think is important? How do you position yourself in the world and in your research field?
The course creates space for reflection, discomfort, and reimagining. PhD candidates are encouraged to break out of their silos, engage in creative methods, and explore their emotions. Through reflection, researchers are encouraged to reclaim ownership over their own narratives of change.
At the heart of the course is the PEPE framework: Pluralizing, Empowering, Politicizing, and Embedding.
Transformative Research PhD Course receives the WUR Education Innovation Award
Apply: the PEPE framework in your research
In the two steps above, we have learned about the PEPE framework.
- Pluralizing invites researchers to go beyond the superficial combining of different perspectives that's inattentive to power and to genuinely reflect on the question: how to attend different knowledge forms and navigate that plurality of different perspectives?
- Empowering tries to address the fact that in research we often communicate dry data or facts and publish them, but we don't attend to all of the emotions and perspectives that play a critical role in how we do research and the importance of whose voice matters.
- Politicizing that attends to the issue of power. We all have very different assumptions about how research might challenge power structures. And that could be more of a scholar activist perspective, but it could also be deeply collaborative.
- Embedding addresses the fact that we're operating in systems that are not necessarily always supportive of what we're doing. How do we move beyond temporary experiments to lasting institutional change?
