Improving how we use workshops when solving complex research problems: reflections from the CHANGE project

Abstract

Organising workshops that successfully address complex research problems is a challenge, especially when the research involves interest-holders with diverse roles and expertise and potentially conflicting values and viewpoints. In this article, we describe and reflect on the approach we took to organising the CHANGE workshop, held in Oslo in June 2024. CHANGE is a complex 3-year project involving the collecting, analysing, and developing cross-sector consensus on a challenging topic. The approaches on which we reflect include fundamental aspects of interest-holder engagement, workshop design, methodological approach, and inclusive participation. Based on our reflections, we present a series of recommendations for consideration by anyone in the general research community using workshops as part of a research process.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Jones, L.B. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8623-1218 Whaley, P. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4021-0785 Bearth, A. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1270-6468 Vist, G.E. Husøy, T. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2827-7111 Hoffmann, S. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3214-7678 Svendsen, C. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3216-0469 Ames, H.M. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8509-7160 Solstad, G. https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2139-0976 Mathisen, G.H. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3824-4898
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Keywords:	Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences; Biochemistry and Cell Biology; Biomedical and Clinical Sciences; Biological Sciences; Generic health relevance
Dates:	Accepted: 14 April 2025 Published (online): 6 May 2025 Published: 6 May 2025
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	19 May 2025 13:23
Last Modified:	19 May 2025 13:23
Status:	Published online
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1007/s00204-025-04062-8
Related URLs:	Author Dataset
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:226798