Emerging and sustaining infrastructures of care: reflections on the possibilities of ethical collaboration between academics and practitioners

In this commentary, we examine the concept of “infrastructures of care”, exploring how they emerge and are sustained through academic-practitioner collaborations in the context of climate action and sustainability. Drawing on our experiences of workshop-based collaboration, we argue that beyond disciplinary alignments and institutional agendas, a sharing of ethical commitments is central to fostering meaningful and long-term collaboration and partnerships. This commentary builds on our reflections from a workshop that we organised, in which we engaged with practitioners across a range of grassroots organisations in Scotland, committed to issues of circular economies, community food justice, creative practice, and heritage. The workshop was a micro-study of coming together and engaging in an open-ended, multilateral dialogue about how we could help each other while being cognisant and mindful of each other's time, capacities, and expectations. Conversations and ideas for collaborations emerged organically in this workshop, however, progressing these collaborations into meaningful transformative action came with a host of institutional challenges. Inspired by Susan Leigh Star and Lauren Berlant, we argue that, for infrastructures of care to thrive and be sustained, the invisible labour of multiple actors across contexts needs much greater foregrounding. For academics, the tensions that persist between infrastructuring care, and the ongoing necessity to adhere to institutional metrics, need continuous negotiation.