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In this article, we highlight a partnership between CommuniVax and a human‐centered design firm (Bridgeable) that resulted in CommuniVaxCHAT—an online toolkit capable of engaging community members and translating their experiences and local knowledge in a way that decision‐makers, including mayors and public health directors, can act upon. In addition to considering the process involved in creating CommuniVaxCHAT, and its associate practicalities, we examine how human‐centered design, and more particularly personas and journeys, can act as boundary objects to facilitate engagement between groups and create interventions or policy. In this way, we argue that HCD can be used similarly to PhotoVoice as a tool to introduce ethnographic insights into applied and participatory contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed citizenship in the 21st Century requires individuals to be numerate. In Australia, all teachers are expected to attend to numeracy inherent in the subjects they teach. Many teachers, however, find this approach challenging and may not see potential benefits for subject learning. Drawing on lesson vignettes and post-lesson interviews, a conceptual approach based on Wenger's communities of practice was used to analyse the use of boundary objects by four secondary history teachers. Their use of boundary objects was categorised by their attention to the contextual and mathematical meanings of the artefact they used. Findings suggest that there is potential for teachers to concurrently enhance subject learning and develop students' numeracy capabilities if they attend to both the contextual and mathematical meanings of the boundary objects they use. Research is needed into how numeracy is addressed in curriculum pedagogy courses. One aspect worthy of investigation is how boundary objects can be used effectively in subjects across the curriculum to enhance subject learning and promote numeracy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As sites where social media corporations profess their commitment to principles like community and free speech, policy documents function as boundary objects that navigate diverse audiences, purposes, and interests. This article compares the discourse of values in the Privacy Policies, Terms of Service, and Community Guidelines of five major platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok). Through a mixed-methods analysis, we identified frequently mentioned value terms and five overarching principles consistent across platforms: expression, community, safety, choice, and improvement. However, platforms limit their burden to execute these values by selectively assigning responsibility for their enactment, often unloading such responsibility onto users. Moreover, while each of the core values may potentially serve the public good, they can also promote narrow corporate goals. This dual framing allows platforms to strategically reinterpret values to suit their own interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenon: As new faculty members begin their careers in Graduate Medical Education, each begins a journey of Professional Identity Formation from the periphery of their educational communities. The trajectories traveled vary widely, and full participation in a given educational community is not assured. While some medical school and post-graduate training programs may nurture Professional Identity Formation, there is scant support for faculty. To date, the trajectories that Graduate Medical Education faculty travel, what may derail inbound trajectories, and what tools Graduate Medical Education faculty use to navigate these trajectories have not been explicitly described. We explore these three questions here. Approach: Communities of Practice, a component of Situated Learning Theory, serves as a helpful framework to explore trajectories of educator identity development among Graduate Medical Educators. We used a inductive and deductive approach to Thematic Analysis, with Situated Learning Theory as our interpretive frame. Semi-structured interviews of faculty members of GME programs matriculating into a Health Professions Education Program were conducted, focusing on participants' lived experiences in medical education and how these experiences shaped their Professional Identity Formation. Findings: Participants noted peripheral, inbound, boundary, and outbound trajectories, but not an insider trajectory. Trajectory derailment was attributed to competing demands, imposter syndrome and gendered marginality. Modes of belonging were critical tools participants used to shape PIF, not only engagement with educator roles but disengagement with other roles; imagination of future roles with the support of mentors; and fluid alignment with multiple mutually reinforcing identities. Participants identified boundary objects like resumes and formal roles that helped them negotiate across Community of Practice boundaries. Insights: Despite a desire for full participation, some clinical educators remain marginal, struggling along a peripheral trajectory. Further research exploring this struggle and potential interventions to strengthen modes of belonging and boundary objects is critical to create equitable access to the inbound trajectory for all of our colleagues, leaving the choice of trajectories up to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

STEAM has gained traction across informal and formal educational settings, but the connections between STEAM disciplines are not always obvious to youth. We argue that an explicit focus on how art and STEM overlap in the world, and how these overlaps connect personally to learner's interests and concerns, is a way to support the development of STEAM-related identities. We developed a "STEAM objects" pedagogical activity aimed at explicitly surfacing the ways that art and STEM are intertwined in everyday objects, as well as the ways that STEAM is connected to learners' own lives. We piloted the activity with educators, asking what they took up from the experience. Our results show how the educators made connections to land, historicity, their professions, function, aesthetics, and agency of materials during the activity. The STEAM objects served as boundary objects that illustrated the integrative nature of art and STEM in the world, as well as bridging important aspects of their lives and STEAM. We discuss the importance of recognizing and leveraging the multiplicities of meaning and ways of knowing, as well as implications for the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to imagine futures collectively is important in coping with evolving and uncertain environments. However, how knowledge is exchanged and produced in such participatory approaches toward futures thinking is not thoroughly understood. Therefore, this in-depth case study of futures workshops assesses the nature of knowledge and the role of boundary objects. The results shed light on how different media, which embed multiple types of knowledge, stimulate participants' imaginations. A carefully chosen sequence of knowledge-generating activities provokes this effect. These insights add to the practical and academic knowledge in the field of futures studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being defined in the West as alternative medicine and often seen as incommensurable with biomedicine and bioscience, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has, paradoxically, assimilated into dominant spaces of knowledge production and legitimation, such as the International Classification of Diseases. In Australia, TCM comprises a designated area of cooperation with China, and TCM research is carried out in numerous universities by otherwise mainstream scientists. Focusing on the Australian case, we examine how and why TCM has transcended scientific skepticism to become an object of scientific study. Through interviews with Australian TCM researchers (n = 10), we identify aspects of TCM that function as conceptual and material boundary objects, facilitating its uptake in bioscientific disciplines. Furthermore, we locate TCM research in the wider context of Australian-Chinese knowledge exchange, highlighting the role of "coordinating boundary objects," such as institutional agreements, in enabling scientific work, as well as the supportive role performed by boundary actors who translate across social worlds. By illustrating how these objects/actors enact TCM research in Australia, as well as their interdependence, the paper contributes a deeper understanding of the operation of boundary objects in international scientific collaboration and the factors determining the scientific success of this alternative medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of regeneration is gaining traction across diverse disciplines, from agriculture and engineering to business and the social sciences. More than just a buzzword, regeneration is emerging as a pivotal boundary object in a paradigm shift that is redefining design principles and transforming humanity's relationship with the environment. This narrative review explores regeneration's journey from its literal origins in biology and engineering to its metaphorical applications in areas such as regenerative economics, agriculture, and culture. We argue that regeneration's conceptual fluidity allows it to adapt and resonate across domains while maintaining a core ethos of holistic, proactive care and stewardship. Central to regeneration is the notion of generativity--a principle that champions giving back more than what is taken, fostering reciprocity, and co-creating a thriving world for all. As regeneration gains prominence, there are risks that it will be misappropriated or diluted by greenwashers; however, its power lies in its ability to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue and place-based solutions. Rather than limiting regeneration through strict definitions, we propose nurturing its development through collaborative social agreements like covenants and treaties that enshrine its core tenets of generativity, diversity, and care. We believe that regeneration's emergence across disciplines heralds a new era of environmental thought and action--one where humanity moves beyond harm reduction to actively healing and enriching the social and ecological systems that we are part of. This review provides a foundation for scholars and practitioners to engage critically with regeneration and collaborate across boundaries to address pressing socio-ecological challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patents are legal delinquents. A growing body of empirical evidence demonstrates that patents repeatedly fail to fulfill the responsibilities they have been assigned in fostering innovation. But I argue here that in their moments of misbehavior, we can catch a glimpse of the social roles patents play when no one is watching. Drawing on insights from the sociology of markets, I argue that patents are surreptitiously performing functions familiar from the grocery store, the vegetable stand, or the barber shop. I suggest that patents are calculative, not in the mathematical sense, but in the sociological sense of structuring and facilitating market relations. This approach to discovering the social roles of patents opens the door to a new examination of patent purposes, and to understanding some otherwise inexplicable characteristics of patent law.

In an era marked by the widespread use of digital technology, educators face the need to constantly learn and develop their own new literacies for the information era, as well as their competencies to teach and apply best practices using technologies. This paper underscores the vital role of ongoing teacher professional learning (OTPL) with a focus on reflective practices and pedagogical reasoning and action (PR&A) in shaping education quality and equity. Examining three key drivers of educational transformation—big data and learning analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and shifting teacher identities—the paper explores their overall impact on teacher practices. This paper emphasizes technology as a crucial boundary object, a catalyst of educational transformation, when used to foster communication and professional growth. To this end, three boundary objects are identified, namely dashboards, AI-driven professional learning environments, and digital communities of practice. These tools illustrate technology's capacity to mediate relationships between transformative educational drivers and teacher practices, offering a pathway to navigate shifting perspectives on OTPL. With a theoretical foundation in equitable education, the paper provides insights into the intricate relationship between boundary objects and evolving educational dynamics. It highlights technology's pivotal role in achieving both quality and equitable education in the contemporary educational landscape. It presents a nuanced understanding of how specific tools may contribute to effective OTPL amid rapid educational transformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore how vocational teacher students’ work with development projects can create coherence between learning in the university and learning in teaching practice. Previous research indicates that students often perceive a lack of coherence between the academic knowledge culture in the university and the experiential knowledge they encounter in teaching practice. The study uses boundary crossing as a theoretical approach, and the results are based on interviews with vocational teacher students. The results reveal that their work with development projects strenghten programme coherence by linking the learning arenas university and teaching practice. The development projects also acted as boundary objects, facilitating the integration of the different knowledge cultures and practices. This study contributes to understanding the potential of development projects to create coherence between university and teaching practice in vocational teacher education. The results suggest the need for closer collaboration between universities and schools in supporting vocational teacher students’ work on development projects to enhance boundary learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research uses a discursive psychology and social constructionist approach to examine how organic food patrons think about, experience, and make sense of the organic label as a "boundary concept." Based on data from 30 in-depth interviews with self-identified organic food consumers, emic and etic coding of consumer narratives reveals the socially constitutive nature of organic food practices. Despite organic food consumers' understanding of what organic means, their meaning-making process derives from a certain kind of nostalgia for their childhood meal experience and upbringing, family values, because "it tastes better," and "just feels right." While consumer knowledge aligns with the analytical sensemaking system, the second group of factors is associated with the experiential system. Hence, leveraging nostalgia appeals in organic food advertising holds promise for mainstreaming organic food consumption practices in marketing contexts such as the U.S., where environmental attitudes are associated with political ideologies and thus polarizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although action research has a history of bridging gaps between research and school practice, challenges emerge when aligning a scientific approach with development work in schools and in collaboration between research and school practice. In this article, we aim to deepen the knowledge on teachers' action research as social learning in collaboration with a research-based PD leader. In this study, we follow two teachers conducting action research in a Swedish upper secondary school, in collaboration with a professional development (PD) leader who is also a doctoral student. Qualitative data have been used to write value-creation stories that illustrate the learning process throughout their collaboration. Our findings show how joint work between the teachers and the PD leader functions as a boundary process where two sets of practices – classroom and academic – are coordinated and contribute to the learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This process article reports on the use of Gioia data structures as a visual boundary object in project management research. Gioia data structures work as effective boundary objects that span a research team’s geographical distance in a virtual setting as an artifact for promoting visual collaboration in project management research. We demonstrate the use of boundary objects as generative tools for cross-disciplinary teams to share a common design method. While boundary objects have been used in project management studies, we extend their use to support collaborative research in project management. Keywords boundary objects, Gioia methodology, visualization, collaborative research, project portfolio management, construction project management [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of regeneration is gaining traction across diverse disciplines, from agriculture and engineering to business and the social sciences. More than just a buzzword, regeneration is emerg­ing as a pivotal boundary object in a paradigm shift that is redefining design principles and transform­ing humanity’s relationship with the environment. This narrative review explores regeneration’s jour­ney from its literal origins in biology and engineer­ing to its metaphorical applications in areas such as regenerative economics, agriculture, and culture. We argue that regeneration’s conceptual fluidity allows it to adapt and resonate across domains while maintaining a core ethos of holistic, proactive care and stewardship. Central to regeneration is the notion of generativity—a principle that champions giving back more than what is taken, fostering reci­procity, and co-creating a thriving world for all. As regeneration gains prominence, there are risks that it will be misappropriated or diluted by greenwash­ers; however, its power lies in its ability to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue and place-based solu­tions. Rather than limiting regeneration through strict definitions, we propose nurturing its develop­ment through collaborative social agreements like covenants and treaties that enshrine its core tenets of generativity, diversity, and care. We believe that regeneration’s emergence across disciplines heralds a new era of environmental thought and action—one where humanity moves beyond harm reduc­tion to actively healing and enriching the social and ecological systems that we are part of. This review provides a foundation for scholars and practition­ers to engage critically with regeneration and col­laborate across boundaries to address pressing socio-ecological challenges.

Air pollution now affects 92 percent of the global population and is responsible for one out of nine deaths, nearly two thirds of which occur in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. Emerging work on the political ecology of air pollution examines how its noxious effects are unevenly distributed across social categories such as race and class. Geographers know much less about the social mechanisms through which air pollution and its risks and mitigation efforts are calculated, however. Situated within northern Thailand's haze crisis and its broader agrarian transitions, we employ ethnographic and geospatial methods to theorize air pollution as a boundary object. Throughout the region, uncertainty over the causes and constitution of air pollution and its flexible interpretation have driven the development of civil society sensor networks and the adoption of portable Air Quality Index monitors and hot spot locating apps. These increasingly widespread technologies not only democratize data but also play a growing role in shifting environmental narratives of seasonal air pollution. By homing in on the boundary work of air pollution, however, we argue that although new, more widely accessible modes of knowledge production can seemingly reduce uncertainty and shift environmental policy, they can also obscure the long-standing political-economic inequalities on which environmental problems are based. This article advances current debates at the nexus of political ecology and science and technology by demonstrating how particulate matter matters differently within and between social groups and the role of sociality in environmental change and the production of political space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ecosystem services embodies an ideological framework, serves as a subject for fundamental research, provides methodological groundwork for applied projects, offers a practical approach to natural resource management, acts as a platform for international governmental and non-governmental collaboration, and serves as a means of knowledge production. The article presents the results of a systematic literature analysis focused on identifying key research trends in the field of ecosystem services that need further attention and development. It also highlights promising directions for transdisciplinary collaboration in the implementation and management of ecosystem services. Research methods involved iterative information retrieval, analysis of scientific papers, and review of contemporary methodological approaches. Based on the processed sources, seven comprehensive research directions of ecosystem services and twenty branches were identified. Ecosystem services are characterized as boundary objects. The main findings point to the need for integration of scientific disciplines, involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, and consolidation of development perspectives across various fields to achieve a compromise between ecosystem services utilization and conservation. The role of boundary organizations in achieving these goals is emphasized. An insufficient integration between social and ecological disciplines in Ukrainian science is identified along with probable reasons for this situation. The conclusions underscore the importance of a transdisciplinary approach to ecosystem services research. Future research prospects include expanding collaboration between researchers and practitioners, as well as refining methodological approaches for comprehensive ecosystem services study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photovoice is an increasingly popular research method across disciplines due to its flexibility and capacity for generating rich data. This article argues that while its practical virtues are abundant, the theoretical contributions of photovoice to qualitative research are just as important. We argue that photographs can act as boundary objects that enable collective sensemaking at multiple stages of a research study. This is fulfilled through a case study of gas extraction and distribution networks and their social consequences in West Virginia, a state in the United States deeply entrenched geographically and culturally in natural resource extraction. Ultimately, this case study demonstrates that photovoice as a process and photographs as artifacts are sites for rich collaborative interpretation and provides a model of how to operationalize photos in multiple stages of research so that study designs are centered around participant experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, a new national Ethics Review Authority (Etikprövningsmyndigheten, EPM) was created in Sweden. In 2020, Sweden's Ethical Review of Research Involving Humans Act was revised, tightening this legislation, and increasing penalties for its infraction. This article draws on empirical material generated by artistic research conducted with a norm-critical contemporary music ensemble. Two of the musicians who collaborated with this research identify as disabled. Consequently, in accordance with EPM, my artistic research was subject to mandatory ethics review. Reflecting critically on my own experience of seeking ethical approval for this artistic research project, I show how EPM's process of ethics review enacts scientific boundary work in Sweden that privileges the interests of academic disciplines that are already well-established. As a corrective to EPM's scientific boundary work I propose the application of an ethics of care that recognises the complex relationalities that exist between research institutions, researchers and research participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexivity appears to be a key focus when designing teachers' training; therefore, designers and trainers need to plan and put in place situated and proactive learning contexts in which reflexivity is supported by specific participatory devices. During a 1st level master's degree for teachers and educators, based on the Trialogical Learning Approach, learners are involved in several collaborative activities to create meaningful objects. Divided into 14 groups of four members covering specific roles (the coordinator, the researcher, the storyboarder, and the diarist), the participants collaboratively built a multimedia teaching resource about a chosen methodological–didactic theme. Applying a qualitative approach, this study analyzes the online diaries compiled during the activity to understand its impact as a "meta" boundary object able to support reflexivity on one's professionalism. The content analysis focused on analyzing how objects and practices enabled learning and participation and how students' identity evolved during group work. The results show that a diary may act as a reflexive tool, allowing for the externalization of the processes that underly the construction of individual and collective knowledge and promoting reflection on practices and identity positioning within a community composed of professionals working in educational fields. In the end, practical implications and recommendations are provided to enhance the reflexive diaries both in teachers' training and in the daily practice with students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated human-Earth system models could be a useful tool for interdisciplinary collaboration on sustainability issues. However, it is challenging to integrate all disciplines equally. Considering modeling frameworks as boundary objects could help. In this perspective, a modeling framework, while clearly defined in its basic function, could be adapted and reinterpreted by researchers from different disciplines according to their specific contexts and questions, yet the framework still remains a common reference point behind these different adaptations. This flexibility and plasticity could contribute to the evolution of the modeling framework itself. The authors discuss how this might look, using the copan:CORE framework as an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: The heuristic potential of work activity-focused territory analyses has yet to be explored in depth. Instead of viewing territories as a product of their actors, the prevailing approaches rely on statistical indicators to view them "from above". OBJECTIVE: To understand how work activity acts upon a territory and transforms it, and to discuss what the main indicators used to characterize territories reveal and conceal. METHODS: Case studies led on two territories, each in a different industry. One on transportation in a sparsely populated "low density" area; the other in an industrial district, focusing on its "high activity rate" cork industry. In the first case, work activity analyses were led with drivers and mobility designers, including systematic observations and interviews, in the context of an endeavour to redesign a local transport network. In the second case, work activity analyses led among cork stopper choosers were followed with an integrative literature review of indicators about the cork industry and its health impacts. RESULTS: This territory analysis highlights: (i) traces of bus drivers' work activity on the mitigation of inequalities in access to public transportation; (ii) "absent indicators" regarding cork choosers' work activity and its health impacts, stressing the existence of a development agenda for this territory focused on cork processing rather than on those who perform it. CONCLUSION: Our analysis of territorialization processes through the lens of work activity signposts a path for research-action seeking to associate territorial development with improvements in the working conditions of citizen workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the use of participatory design processes, methods, and tools to develop interactive healthcare and wellbeing solutions involving children with motor disabilities and their caregiving system. This contribution provides a theoretical framework focused on the engagement roles that children participating in co-design processes can play, providing the description of BODYSOUND, a pilot project developed within the SISCODE H2020 European project. We will present the co-design process divided into two main phases: co-creation and co-development. For each of these phases, we carried out iterative design actions that will be presented according to the role with which children are engaged, the targets involved, and methods to collect data. All of these were subjected to the primary goal of each design action. The final part systematizes the results of the analysis and identifies different goals and methods for children's participation according to specific design phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has focused on the individual dispositions of trust and the interpersonal trust relations among boundary spanners, paying little attention to the role objects play in trust building in inter-organizational collaboration processes. This work explores the dynamic relation between trust and digital objects in inter-organizational collaboration. A longitudinal study of an innovative tele-home monitoring service involving health professionals from hospitals, municipalities, and general practice clinics forms the empirical context. This study demonstrates that trust is not exclusively a human feature but also a dimension of digital objects since such objects mediate and build trust among actors by enabling focused communication and shared knowledge, improving predictability and transparency in behavior and decision making, and creating visibility of work contexts and tasks. In this paper, these three features denote objects' trust-building capacities, which support shared problem-solving and collaboration. The study, however, also shows a flip side, since digital objects may cause mistrust and thereby act as barriers to collaboration. Overall, these insights contribute to the literature about trust in inter-organizational collaboration processes by foregrounding the role of objects in trust-building processes and exploring their trust-building capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst patient engagement (PE) activities have become increasingly prevalent in development of medicines, collaborating actors have different perspectives on the goals of PE and its added value. In the production of PE standards and frameworks, the significance of these differences tends to be minimised. Boundary objects have been shown to mediate knowledge exchange between multiple social worlds, thereby playing an important role in participatory technology governance processes. In this article, we draw on boundary objects to learn from the process of co-designing a PE monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework within the Innovative Medicines Initiative–Patients Active in Research and Dialogues for an Improved Generation of Medicines (IMI-PARADIGM) consortium (2018–20). As facilitators of PARADIGM's co-design process, we report on the challenges encountered in developing a practicable M&E framework that serves a variety of needs and interests. We argue these challenges of co-design reflect a negotiation of different frames throughout, thereby providing insight into how such work may contribute to addressing the challenge of knowledge integration in institutional medicines development settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workplace health promotion (WHP) are often depicted as an opportunity for pursuing a better and broader well-being condition under the assumption that working environments affect the physical, mental, and social well-being of individuals who spend large proportion of waking hours at work. While most empirical studies provided medical evidence to the effectiveness of WHP programs, scholars question the instrumental purposes of these programs founded on the belief that "healthy workers are better workers". Little is known, for instance, about the design of WHP programs and their acceptance by workers. Our study addresses this gap, analyzing the co-production of a WHP program in an Italian research institute promoted by the healthcare authority, the local government and the national center for prevention and security in the workplaces. To this aim, we adopt the notion of boundary object investigate how different stakeholders reclaim to take part and being involved in this process, re-shaping their goals and their boundaries and why a WHP program or parts of it may be rejected or re-negotiated by its recipients. Our analysis reveals how each stakeholder contributes to re-shape the WHP program which emerges as the modular product of the composition of each matter of concern. Most notably, the strong rooting in a clinical perspective and the original focus on only workers at risk is gradually flanked by initiatives to involve all employees. Moreover, workers draw a line as for the legitimacy of employers' intervention in the personal sphere of health promotion, embracing interventions addressing diet and physical activity while rejecting measures targeting smoking and alcohol consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication involving visualizations in science and applications involves or even requires coordination. Much visualization research focuses on tasks in research or applications and provides valuable insights that help improve these modes and means of communication. That focus and resulting benefits makes a reduction to tasks or defined goals seem amenable for a more thorough consideration of social and cultural aspects. This contribution to the focus topic Insights in Visual Communication suggests that the boundary object concept can greatly help deepen considerations of social and cultural heterogeneity and adds insights and perspectives to better consider social and cultural aspects of visual communication. The theoretical concept of boundary objects, originating in heterogeneous distributed problem solving research, offer a pragmatic basis for enhancing visual communication to improve meaning production. The overarching issue for developing this direction in visual communication can be formulated through a broad question: In heterogeneous situations, how can research enhance communication involving visual objects for problem solving through a consideration of social and cultural aspects? I consider an example of cooperative design of maps to show how research can benefit from a consideration of boundary objects. The example highlights a cooperative mode of visual communication used in decision making involving both explicit and implicit goals and aspects from a cognitive perspective. The potential for improvements and better solutions in visual communication can benefit from a stronger consideration of the boundary objects concept.

This essay redirects attention to questions of reception in German-speaking contexts, instead of a limited stress on what is "produced" there. This not only affords us, German studies scholars at North American universities, an opportunity to take into account our own reception of imported European goods within our specific institutional and local cultural contexts. It also confirms what we so often claim in our teaching statements, namely, that our students play a key role in the meaning of these objects, not as mere "receivers" but as fellow interlocuters, since the questions asked about these objects structure them in the first place. The messiness of these transcultural European trade routes needs to be taken seriously so that the noise, mixed messages, and missed signals might become part of our objects of interpretation, instead of being relegated to the footnotes of standard histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Melting glaciers and snow fields have become one of the strongest symbols of global climate change, instigating last-chance tourism and rallying cries for climate action from activists. In this sense, retreating glaciers act as charismatic entities, appealing to the public's feelings and imaginations. The melting cryosphere is also a subject for scientific enquiry, providing the knowledge needed to establish the rates at which glaciers are declining and how they interlink and interact with other natural and human systems. Here, by applying a relational ontology rooted in human geography and science and technology studies, we show how melting glaciers and snow fields serve as charismatic boundary objects that enable tourism actors to raise awareness about climate change and push for action. Specifically, we conducted interviews and surveys with mountain guides and other actors involved in glacier tourism in local communities surrounding two of the major ice caps in Norway, Jostedalsbreen and Folgefonna, and found that the melting glaciers serve to reconcile different knowledge systems, allowing for the coexistence of affect, imaginaries, and scientific rationality. Thus, with mountain guides as the catalysts, melting glaciers contribute to a shift from a discourse of fear to one of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how professionals' efforts to reach policy goals engender boundary work. Analyses of interviews with service professionals in three welfare services in Norway which collaborate to implement the Introduction Program for refugees show how conflicting logics in services pose dilemmas for service professionals, and that political ideals of collaborative governance and integrated services are hard to put into practice. Service professionals resolve these dilemmas by engaging in various forms of boundary work, and the scope for boundary work is conditioned by the different service logics they operate under. Welfare service professionals collaborate to reach three policy goals—qualification of refugees, empowerment of users, and providing equity in services. The analysis shows that conflicting service logics result in boundary work practices that make coordination of, and collaboration between, services difficult, as services do not agree on how to interpret, and share responsibility for enacting, policy goals. The outcome of boundary work practices is a reshuffling of responsibilities—and a redelegation of tasks—which in principle should be shared, onto specific services. Different interpretations of policy goals instigate boundary work among welfare service professionals, which not only involves struggles over jurisdictional boundaries, but also negotiations over whom owns a policy problem, and over how to define and represent the problem. The findings from this study encourage researchers to further explore how policy goals are used as boundary objects in professionals' negotiations over jurisdictional boundaries, in order to further understand what triggers and shapes boundary work among professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis applies boundary theory to public manager efforts to overcome AI capacity gaps through a public sector collaborative learning forum. Administrative and interview data identify the types of knowledge managers are able to access, the types of organizational differences that influence learning, and the strategies public managers use to overcome them. Analysis suggests that unstructured learning fora are better suited to the transfer of tacit procedural knowledge than declarative knowledge about AI, and emphasizes the importance of social trust and network structure to overcome knowledge gaps through peer learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main proposal of this paper is that boundary objects and the trading zones in which they occur are the analogue of pheromone trails in the foraging of a termite colony. The colony can be construed as a stigmergic system where the traces of the actions of individual termites coordinate their further actions without the existence of any central control or planning structures. The coordinated systems approach proposed by this paper lends support to the idea that such a system is minimally cognitive in the sense that it is responsible for goal-directed behaviour. Boundary objects and trading zones in scientific practice play a similar functional role to pheromone traces because they are responsible for the same kind of coordination. This approach therefore provides a cognitive account of the social notions of boundary object and trading zone without making representationalist or computationalist assumptions. Moreover, it is scale-invariant—the same analytical technique can be applied at multiple scales simultaneously. It therefore provides a framework for an understanding of the complementarity of cognitive and social approaches to scientific investigation and points to areas for further ethnographic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]