Methods for Researching Global Challenges

Methods for Researching Global Challenges: An Interdisciplinary Guide is a practical and forward-thinking guide to the transdisciplinary research methods best suited for studying complex, high-stakes global issues, from climate change and inequality to digital governance and pandemics.

Bridging disciplines and traditions, this essential volume equips researchers, policymakers, and practitioners with innovative, ethically engaged approaches for real-world inquiry into the conditions shaping today's interconnected world. Organized around both methodological perspectives and global challenge domains, the book features participatory, decolonial, digital, and transdisciplinary approaches that respond to the growing inadequacy of conventional research methods for addressing systemic, border-transcending problems. Chapters cover diverse topics including action-oriented methods, cross-national surveys, digital ethnography, big data analytics, scenario planning, and Indigenous research strategies, demonstrating how method and ethics are inseparable—especially when working in volatile or contested environments.

This volume responds to the growing inadequacy of conventional research approaches to addressing systemic and border-transcending global problems. It offers methodological developments tailored to contemporary global challenges. It provides practical resources for scholars and practitioners navigating uncertainty, injustice, and rapid change, serving those who seek not only to understand but to influence the complex systems and power dynamics that define our era.

Chapter 7 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.