Long-Table Discussions

Long-Table Discussions include individuals differing in perspectives, levels of power and career stage, including stakeholders. This format encourages “breaking down barriers” and “evoking new ways of thinking” through incidental conversations. These discussions are structured so as to occur in a non-hierarchical setting. Each participant gets the same voice. Long-Table Discussions are more effective if they span divergent disciplines. Having an artist or a philosopher present often helps with this spanning.

• The meeting starts with an idea, provocation or question.
• Someone (typically not the person with the provocation) moderates the discussion.
• The goal is to begin thinking together NOT to resolve things. It is meant to be an opening up, a beginning.
• People need to wait to talk until called upon. This facilitates lifting up voices with different career stages. 
• Raise two fingers for a point/question that follows directly, one finger for a new topic.
• If there is interest, a Long-Table Discussion can build into a more formal, more directed Catalysis Meeting. 
• Be responsible about being on time. These can go long. Try to prevent that. Leave people wanting to come back to talk more.

Ideally, the provocation represents a novel idea that is big enough to connect to many disciplines, but narrow enough to be a focus of conversation. 

The best practice for these meetings is that there is one person who introduces a “provocation,” a novel idea of some sort. Another person facilitates conversations. These meetings can be more or less formal. Where there is less mutual trust in the group, formality is beneficial. In the more formal version, the facilitator calls upon individuals in the room when they raise their hand. The facilitator writes down who raised their hand and in what order. Individuals raise two fingers on their hand if they have something about the topic at hand, one finger if they have a comment/question related to the provocation but unrelated to the immediate topic.

These will often — but not exclusively — be hosted in Holladay Hall on NC State’s Main Campus, and can be integrated with larger university events or symposiums.

The Pan-Af Project, with ties to NC State, has used camera traps and non-invasive sampling to study chimpanzees across their full geographic range. It is the biggest project ever conducted on chimpanzees and, given the contraction of chimpanzee populations, likely to be the biggest ever to be conducted. It includes data on chimpanzee diet, parasites, gut microbiomes, behaviors and cultures, as well as on the species with which chimpanzees co-occur. 

These data are key to connecting chimpanzee conservation to the conservation of the forests on which they depend and carbon sequestration. However, the current limitations are: a standardized approach to managing and using data that allows all stakeholders to take action, and the ability to use those data to bring the key global stakeholders to the table. We propose a Working Group focused on this endeavor.

The imminent antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis is exacerbated by the lack of new antimicrobials, gaps in data exchange, the effects of a changing climate on disease outbreaks, and the need for rapid diagnostics. Scientists are currently limited in their ability to develop game-changing approaches to societal challenges in instances in which they must navigate vast landscapes of heterogeneous, multifaceted data. 

Our overall objective is to generate transformative molecular and population-based solutions to target AMR at the human-animal-environment (HAE) interface. NC State’s Global One Health Academy and the Integrative Sciences Initiative will leverage existing strengths, partnerships and expertise in AMR and infectious disease to facilitate innovation, generate real-world solutions for global deployment, secure extramural funding and establish sustainable partnerships to help solve a leading 21st century health threat. We expect participation from other academies and interdisciplinary units. This will provide a springboard to test multiple scenarios and outcomes in unique ecosystems that highlight the complex nature of population-environment interactions, challenges related to resource conservation and economic development, global interconnections, education, and knowledge transfer programs that benefit the NC State and global community.

Urgent challenges face African crop production, where agriculture employs more than 60 percent of the continent’s population, yet struggles with low yields, climate variability, pest infestations, and chronic underinvestment in research for staple and indigenous crops. With Africa’s population projected to double by 2050, the imperative for food security and climate-resilient agricultural systems has never been greater, requiring collaborative expertise spanning crop genetics, pest and disease resistance, drought tolerance, soil health, biotechnology, agroecology and digital agriculture. 

At the same time, growers in North Carolina are also facing economic threats due to low margins and competition from other international markets with access to low-cost labor. These domestic issues can be partially alleviated by developing new, higher-value cropping systems, building alternative value chains and developing new local markets in the southeastern United States that serve both the African diaspora as well as the requirement for new sources of biomaterials. 
We see opportunity to positive impact both of these grand challenges by convening representatives of our local agricultural ecosystem with researchers from NC State alongside those from African universities, national agricultural research organizations, CGIAR (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) centers as well as private sector innovators, and international development partners to co-develop resilient, high-value production systems for indigenous African crops adapted to both African and North Carolinian agro-ecological conditions.