All-rounders: Bonus Conversation with Professor Fitzgibbon
Interview with Micaela Tam and Christy Davis
Today’s all-rounder is none other than Professor Joy Fitzgibbon, an insightful all-rounder whom we interviewed recently for a three-part series kicked off in our June Newsletter. Part One of our conversation with Professor Fitzgibbon focused on the importance of eliminating the distance between academia and other sectors to create a shared interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary space in which all stakeholders can learn and grow from each other. Today’s article is a special bonus feature that carries forward the discourse on this need for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. In other words: how all-rounded perspectives can contribute to the success of networks where groups collaborate around a shared problem.
How do current trends in global health incorporate the need for an “all-rounded” mind-set?
In global health policy right now (where clinical medicine and public health blends with public policy, political economy, and other relevant disciplines such as history and anthropology), we’re seeing the transfer of knowledge from various perspectives and other disciplines that embody interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary discourse and collaboration. People who use very particular scientific languages that don’t overlap are finding a common, higher language and something entirely new is being created. People are framing problems in fresh way, recognising that we’re dealing with similar problems from different vantage points but then finding an entirely new way to spin, pivot and respond! This is transformative — we are able to reach those that we’re trying to help but couldn’t before.
Often times, people don’t recognise that they’re dealing with similar problems from different vantage points. For example, it can be hard to translate social impact thinking to encompass the needed business case as well. How do we create collaborative spaces to cultivate more all-rounded perspectives?
We can see World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO) are producing more reports on that recently. It’s interesting — we’re speaking about the need of the business community to see themselves as ethical agents. If, for example, Asia P3 Hub is working within universities, maybe collaborative efforts with business schools are a logical way to go. Your team members can come into this business school space, and introduce and challenge the worldview of business students. You have the opportunity to redefine what they see and understand is possible; this has the potential to create a new movement within business ethics. I think people in business ethics often feel bedraggled, finding it an uphill battle to make those arguments, but if organisations like you can teach those students to make new “doing good by doing well” kinds of arguments through new types of engagement (with unlikely stakeholders), this may move things along.
Why are different approaches and perspectives needed in networks (groups that come together from various backgrounds to collaborate around a shared problem)?
There is a creative synergy when people of various backgrounds meet that can enable new solutions and visions for what is possible. I am reminded of a quote from Dr. John G. Ruggie — former Dean of Columbia School of International Affairs and former Undersecretary General to the UN. He said something to this effect: “If we fail to solve some of our most difficult problems in international relations, it will first be a failure of our imaginations.” I suspect networks can be part of sparking those imaginations to see new horizons and possibilities.
For what it’s worth, what we’re doing together right now, this face-to-face electronic video conversation via Skype across continents, also allows people of various backgrounds to collaborate. We are finding that the desire to complement electronic communication with face-to-face meetings is quite common in networks. I am not sure, but I think it is something to do with forging trust, understanding and being understood, and thus building a foundation for resolving differences over approach or perspective.
About all-rounder, Professor Joy Fitzgibbon
Professor Joy Fitzgibbon is a fellow and Assistant Professor of Trinity College in University of Toronto and the Associate Director of the prestigious Macmillan Trinity One Program. An expert on global health and development, Professor Fitzgibbon received her PhD from the University of Toronto and completed public health and clinical epidemiology courses at both University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and Johns Hopkins University. She works at the intersection of international relations and public policy to explore the impact of global health networks on policy reform. Her publications include the co-authored Networks of Knowledge: Collaborative Innovation in International Learning and policy reports for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament (CCACD).
