(2015). Learning and Innovation Networks for Sustainable Agriculture: Processes of Co-evolution, Joint Reflection and Facilitation. The Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension: Vol. 21, Learning and Innovation Networks for Sustainable Agriculture: Processes of Co-evolution, Joint Reflection and Facilitation, pp. 1-11.

Purpose: We investigate how the structural conditions of eight different European agricultural innovation systems can facilitate or hinder collaboration and social learning in multidisciplinary innovation networks. Methodology: We have adapted the Innovation System Failure Matrix to investigate the main barriers and enablers eight countries (England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, The Netherlands and Switzerland). Findings: Results show some of the recent trends the AKS actors in these countries have experienced and how these have affected their potential to act as collaborators in multidisciplinary innovation networks. Lack of funds, combined with horizontal and vertical fragmentation and the lack of proper evaluation criteria for collaborative innovation networks are among the most important threats we found. Practical Implications: This study shows that each national AIS has some unique features. This means that the implementation of policies promoting collaboration and social learning (e.g. the European Innovation Partnerships and Operational Groups) should depend on a critical reflection of the existing structural elements of the AIS in each country and whether there is a need for inclusion of new actors, or whether certain innovations for collective goods should be promoted. Originality: The paper contributes to the ongoing discussion in the scientific literature on the advantages and disadvantages of privatization of extension and advisory services and the shift from thinking in terms of the traditional Agricultural Knowledge System towards a broader Agricultural Innovation System.

Notions of care for humans and more-than-humans appear at the margins of the sustainability transformations debate. This paper explores the merits of an ethics of care approach to sustainability transformations. It argues that more radical, transformative change can be fostered via three mutually reinforcing dimensions: a) ethically-informed practices; b) relational response-ability; and c) emotional awareness. This novel theoretical and methodological lens emphasizes the transformative potential of caring practices and as such extends the reach of the sustainability transformations debate.

In various case studies across Europe the vital role of rural place leadership in enabling a place-based approach to local and regional development has been highlighted, although not always explicitly addressed as such. This paper aims to do so by reviewing the findings from a selection of earlier research projects within a framework of the role of rural leadership in place-based development. Building on the increasing body of literature on place leadership, the review reveals how place leadership in rural areas is performed by varied public, private and civic actors; is able to bridge vested stakes and make new connections; is supportive to joint learning and innovation and an increasing range of bottom-up grassroots initiatives. Effective rural place leadership initiates joint reflection and enforces a collaborative spirit resulting in an expanding spiral of new alliances and new (institutional) arrangements. This underpins the importance of rural place leadership in building collective agency and its capacity to better attune the institutional setting to the specificities of place and thus enhance place-based development.