Meeting needs & requirements: developing a Code of Conduct for an interdisciplinary consortium engaging with collaborative research practices in the Arctic

Research funding frameworks and programmes, such as Horizon Europe, increasingly encourage and reward large-scale, interdisciplinary, and international projects. These initiatives place growing requirements on applicants to address complex global problems through a shared understanding and a transparent commitment to ethics, equity, gender, knowledge co-production, and citizen science. In this research note, we introduce and evaluate several participatory methods employed by an interdisciplinary research team in the development of a project specific Code of Conduct during the start-up phase of a Horizon Europe-funded and Arctic-focused project. This process served as a foundational step to align diverse academic perspectives with community-centred values, preparing the consortium for respectful collaborative research with Indigenous rights holders and local communities at a later stage of the project. By evaluating these early-stage methodologies, we examine how the development of a Code of Conduct by a consortium, early on in a project, can help to establish the shared understanding necessary for interdisciplinary and international research collaboration.