Paper short abstract:

By examining an international five-party transdisciplinary research partnership, we discuss the challenges of co-existing multilateral representations of “the Other” that affect project outcomes and redefine research responsibility in collaborative efforts.

Paper long abstract:

In 2019 we started the “Green Health” project, funded by the Darwin Initiative, whose main objective is to conduct a collaborative, transdisciplinary (TD) process for building a framework for implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol in Guatemala. By co-researching the medical ethnobotany of the Maya Q’eqchi’ alongside Ajilonel traditional healers, Councils of Elders, anthropologists, chemists, an SME, policy experts and government officials, the project looks to build a precedent for successful collaborations based on equitable access and benefit sharing that move away from the usual colonial approaches seen in drug discovery stemming from indigenous peoples’ knowledge. One of the fundamentals of a TD process is equal participation and representation in all steps of the research and its application, yet the challenges of bringing together disparate values, expectations, cultural backgrounds, and knowledge systems, amidst pre-existing power differentials, is a complex one. The role of the anthropologists in creating intelligible socio-epistemic bridges that aid in trust-building and mutual learning has been key to the project, laying the groundwork for a reflexive process that is often uncomfortable but necessary, in order to keep an accountable and responsible approach to applied research. This paper offers a reflection on the experiences and challenges of this project as a gate to address larger questions about what constitutes a truly intercultural, respectful and responsible research partnership in a global collaborative context, and to examine how accounting for all partners’ perspectives builds complex projections of mutual representation affecting project outcomes.