The vitality of humanity depends on functioning coastal and marine social-ecological systems. Knowledge co-production with non-academic stakeholders is key to tackle the sustainability challenges we face. However, Early-Career Researchers (ECRs) often face obstacles when using approaches and methodologies of knowledge co-production, because scientific career paths have traditionally been locked within disciplinary boundaries. Together with the working Group ‘Anticipating and Transforming Coastal Futures’ within the German Committee Future Earth, we are trying to understand the specific challenges that ECRs face.

The workshop is aimed at ECRs with and without prior experience of knowledge co-production. In this workshop we want to shed light on different approaches of knowledge co-production by exploring some personal stories of knowledge co-production presented by two early-career and two senior researchers. We further want to present initial findings of a questionnaire investigating the obstacles to knowledge co-production for early-career marine researchers, and discuss ways of mitigating their impact on ECRs future pathways.