Education, Knowledge Communication and Sustainable Governance: An Analytical Framework for University Narratives and Digital Knowledge Infrastructures

ABSTRACT Universities increasingly organise and communicate sustainability‐related knowledge through reports, databases, digital collections and other knowledge infrastructures. Existing research, however, has focused mainly on institutional narratives, disclosure practices or digital resources themselves, leaving underexplored how specialist knowledge, including material and sonic knowledge, becomes intelligible, credible and usable in educational and public settings. This article develops an analytical framework comprising three interrelated mechanisms: translation, through which specialist knowledge becomes intelligible through classification, contextualisation and interpretation; evidential warranting, through which knowledge claims gain credibility through traceable relations to sources, methods, data and uncertainty; and educational and public circulation, through which knowledge enters new educational and public settings and becomes usable. The framework takes knowledge objects and their movement across settings as the unit of analysis, distinguishing representational, provenance and circulation evidence. Using the Ancient Shu Musical Instrument Knowledge Base (ASMIK) as an illustrative case, the article shows how archaeological objects, acoustic data, organological descriptions, documentary evidence and historical interpretations of instruments, sound and musical practice can be organised within a single digital knowledge infrastructure. It argues that digitisation, access, understanding, learning and governance effects should be treated as distinct processes. University knowledge communication therefore depends on maintaining intelligibility, credibility, usability and revisability as knowledge moves across settings.