A ‘Governance Lunches’ Learning Communities Journal issue:

Dear Governance Lunchers and Writers

1.  We have talked to a number of publishers about a book on Governance research issues in Northern Australia – the topic of our lunch time discussions
2. We have decided that the best place to start would be a special edition of the Learning Communities Journal, which tells the story of our discussions, and provides the opportunities for people to publish articles which put a particular governance angle on our individual research projects.
3. We hope that articles and excerpts from the special edition may find their way into a book which will be framed up in collaboration with an interested publisher.
4. At this stage we expect that the title of the special edition would be something like: ‘Governance in Northern Australian Communities: Learning from Sharing Experience as Researchers’.
5. The LCJ edition will be introduced with an editorial, talking about how the group came to be, and how it unfolded, including the writing of our ‘one-pagers’, the blog, the discussions and transcriptions.
6. If you would like to part of this writing exercise here are your instructions:

o   Revisit your one pager.

o   You might be interested to read the attached short article ‘Understanding Localism’ (see below). You might want to think if and how your work fits into the frame for analysing policy which this paper sets up.

o   Helen will pull together a final paper thinking about governance and localism.

o   Your task would be to write about 2-3000 words expanding upon the original paper in which tell the story of how your understanding of your work has changed over the past year, how changing forms and understandings of governance (for example the announcement of the IAS and its application process) have changed your and your work.

o   Look at the transcriptions of what you and others have said, and think about how our ideas have come together and separated

o   If you have a draft ready by the end of February, Helen will be available in Darwin for two weeks to work with you personally on developing your draft in terms of the overall themes emergent in the volume

o   If you don’t have a one-pager, now is the time to start.

o   Helen will be available to help you structure your writing in a way which might appeal to the reviewers.

7. We would like to continue the lunchtime discussions into the future, but from now on without the recording and transcriptions.  Michaela will be diverting her attention to her post doc, so we are hoping someone from one of the other groups within the NI will be happy to take over the coordination, maybe with a new focus.

‘Understanding Localism’

Evans, Marsh, Stoker (2013) Understanding Localism

In this paper, Evans Stoker and Marsh outline three different types of localism – managerial, representative and community. As we revisit our 1-pagers, we may like to consider our work in relation to these categories.