ITD24 Arichve: Sessions 151-180

by Gabriela Michelini, Antonietta Di Giulio

Since the discussions on choice of methods, epistemology and rigour that took place in the workshop "Methods of knowledge integration in inter- and transdisciplinary research – what about epistemology and rigour?" at ITD21, the working group "toolkits&methods" of the ITD Alliance has been advancing its Rigour Project on addressing the criteria, indicators and dimensions for assessing the appropriateness, robustness, scientific rigour, and effectiveness of (combinations of) tools and methods. In 2022, 2023 and 2024 a set of discussion sessions took place to present and discuss single methods, and several workshops took place to collect, compare, and document experiences and perspectives from the ITD community. The time has come to reflect upon the developments and learnings and discuss how the question about epistemology and rigour could be advanced such as to benefit the entire TD community. To expand the group of people and perspectives included, we propose an innovative asynchronous discussion throughout the duration of the ITD 2024 conference. Knowledge, experiences, and contributions will be added to a living document, accessible via a QR code provided on a poster during the conference or through the link provided on the working group's website: https://itd-alliance.org/working-groups/toolkits_methods/rigour-project/

In this presentation, we will frame the contents and aim of the poster to open up the discussion and invite all contributors. This invitation is extended to all working group members and any ITD24 participant interested in the topic. The results will be documented and distributed after the conference.

by Hussein Zeidan, Laura de Groot, Amber Mers

Transdisciplinary approaches have emerged as important avenues for addressing complex societal problems. These approaches transcend disciplinary boundaries, fostering connections among different disciplines and engaging non-academic stakeholders in problem-solving (Klein, 2015). A considerable scholarly effort has been dedicated to identifying and recommending the essential skills and competencies that are needed for transdisciplinary endeavours (Redman & Wiek, 2021). Consequently, there is a notable shift in educational paradigms towards transdisciplinary learning, to equip future researchers with the necessary competencies to effectively navigate and engage in transdisciplinary endeavours.

Within the literature, there is an increasing focus on developing lists of competencies for successful transdisciplinary engagements. However, this poses challenges as it can conceal the convergence of skills, mastering skill sets, and navigating the dynamic trade-offs. Moreover, current studies often overlook the role of individual identities in competency development for transdisciplinarity. The multifaceted array of values, beliefs, skills, knowledge, attitudes, and background of individual identities greatly influence one’s participation in and contributions to transdisciplinary endeavours.

To move beyond the prevailing focus in transdisciplinary education solely on acquiring lists of competencies to navigate complex problems, we aim to broaden the discourse by emphasizing the significance of the individual identity of researchers in the development of these skills. Hence, it is essential to delve into the aspects of their identity that researchers deem critical for their engagement within transdisciplinary environments. In light of this, we propose organizing a workshop at the ITD-24 conference, inviting scholars, researchers, and practitioners to reflect on their individual (research) identities and share how these shape their engagement in transdisciplinary endeavours. The workshop will focus on uncovering the elements of their (research) identity that participants consider vital in supporting their roles as inter- and transdisciplinary researchers and/or practitioners. We are eager to capitalize on the conference theme of "Inter- and Transdisciplinarity Beyond Buzzwords," anticipating an audience interested in exploring beyond surface-level narratives and delving deeper into the complexities of inter- and transdisciplinary work.

We believe that participating in a creative reflection exercise, which draws upon personal experiences and development toward transdisciplinary competencies, can lead to the emergence of intriguing insights and contribute to the reflective mindset that we champion in the inter- and transdisciplinary journey. It will also help us to tap into the key milestones and challenges of our fellow researcher's transdisciplinary journey. The proposed outline of the workshop exercise is described below. Throughout the workshop session, a metaphorical "backpack" will be utilized to represent what participants have accumulated during their life's journey. This includes essential items they have chosen to carry with them and rely on, reflecting on why their backpacks appear as they do. Furthermore, participants will explore how their backpacks can be further filled with essentials to continue their transdisciplinary journey.

Keywords: transdisciplinarity; competencies; identity

Outline of the workshop exercise

Introduction (10 minutes)

• The session will start with a brief introduction of ourselves and our motivation for conducting this work, followed by a brief round of introductions from the participants (i.e., name and position).

• Afterwards, the outline of the workshop exercise will be briefly explained.

Part 1: Reflecting on the individual (both professional & personal) identity

• Mapping the journey: What is in your backpack? (20 minutes)

• First, participants will be asked to individually create a visual representation of their (professional & personal) journey up until now. They will be encouraged to consider moments or experiences that shaped their journey. These could for instance include life events, academic achievements, career shifts, challenges etc. The visual representation could be a timeline, mind map, story or any other creative format that seems suitable for participants.

• Subsequently, in pairs, participants will briefly share (the highlights of) their journey with each other.

• Reflecting on the journey: Why does your backpack look the way it is? (20 minutes)

• Second, to further illustrate each plotted point on the journey map, participants are asked to write a brief reflective annotation. Participants are encouraged to do so, by considering questions such as:

• What was the context or situation that contributed to that specific moment in the journey?

• What challenges did you encounter, and how did you overcome them?

• What insights or lessons did you gain from this experience?

• What traits, characteristics, skills, knowledge, or other developments have you cultivated throughout this experience or series of moments?

• In pairs they will share this journey

Part 2: Connecting the dots with transdisciplinarity

• Connecting your journey to transdisciplinarity: What is essential in your backpack to engage in transdisciplinarity? (20 minutes)

• First, it's essential to understand how participants perceive transdisciplinarity and what they view as its connected elements. Participant are asked to express their thoughts and associations when they hear the term “transdisciplinarity”. Once more, participants are encouraged to individually express their interpretations through either a drawing or a story.

• What does transdisciplinarity mean for you?

• What do you consider to be transdisciplinary competencies?

• Second, in pairs, participants are required to share and brief discussion on the definition of transdisciplinarity and essential transdisciplinary competencies. They are encouraged to explore questions such as:

• Where does this understanding originate from?

• Why do you deem these competencies significant?

• Third, participants are asked to go back to their journey map, attempting to identify which transdisciplinary competencies were developed during the pivotal moments as earlier indicated on their journey map. Participants will be stimulated to use different colours of post-its corresponding to, for instance, attitudes, skills, values, and competencies, to create insight into the various elements collected in their backpacks.

Part 3: Sharing and exchanging

• Unpacking: Show us what is inside your backpack (20 minutes)

• First, Participants will be divided into groups of four, allowing a space to share and exchange their journey map. To stimulate discussion, participants are encouraged to explore similarities and differences in their experiences and reflections.

• As a next step, participants will engage in discussions in small groups on how the insights gained in this workshop can inform their future approaches to transdisciplinary learning and practice.

• To close our session, each group will be asked to share their main key takeaway of the workshop session.

Reference:

• Klein, J. T. (2015). Reprint of “Discourses of transdisciplinarity: Looking back to the future”. Futures, 65, 10-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.01.003

• Redman, A., & Wiek, A. (2021). Competencies for Advancing Transformations Towards Sustainability. Frontiers in Education, 6, 785163. https://doi.org/10.3389/FEDUC.2021.785163/BIBTEX  

by Christian Pohl, Pius Krütli, Michael Stauffacher

“Ten reflective steps for rendering research societally relevant” is a workshop format of TdLab which we use in teaching and research (Pohl et al., 2017). Students or researchers bring their project to the workshop and reflect and discuss, for instance, (a) whether the knowledge they provide matches the current societal knowledge need; (b) for what reason (e.g. power, interest, expertise) they want to collaborate with specific disciplines and actors of civil society, the public or the private sector; or (c) when in the research process they should involve which disciplines or further societal actors in what form and intensity.

The ten steps workshop usually takes 4-8 hours. Steps 1-4 focus on the knowledge produced, steps 5-9 on disciplines and further societal actors to be involved. Individual thinking alternates with pairwise and plenary discussions as well as theoretical inputs. For the training we will run through all steps in 90 minutes. To manage, we will ask participants to prepare steps 1-2 in advance and skip the theoretical input. The training schedule is as follows (‘ means Minutes):

Welcome and introduction (Moderator, 3’)

• Which knowledge to produce

• Step 1: Formulate your research question(s) (Prepared individual work, 5’)

• Step 2: Formulate the societal problem you want to help solve (Prepared individual work, 5’)

• Step 3: Specify the stage of the policy cycle (Individual work, 10’)

• Step 4: Clarify the form of knowledge required (short explanation by Moderator, step is left out, 5’)

Discussion (in groups of 2-3, 10’)

• Who to involve, why and how

• Step 5: Identify relevant disciplines and societal actors (Individual work, 5’)

• Step 6: Position disciplines and societal actors in relation to the research question (Individual work, 10’)

• Step 7: Carry out an actor constellation (short explanation by Moderator, step is left out, 5’)

• Step 8: Clarify disciplines’ and societal actors’ expected contributions (Individual work, 5’)

• Step 9: Plan a functional-dynamic interaction (Individual work, 10’)

• Reflecting the use of the 10 steps

• Step 10: Think about main lessons learned (collecting most important insights, 15’)

Closure and thank (Moderator, 2’)

• Learning goal(s): Participants are able

• to decide whether the 10 steps are relevant for their work.

• to use individual steps or all 10 steps to better embed their projects in the broader societal context and to improve the project’s science-practice interfaces.

• (if they are experienced in moderating) to adapt the 10 steps to their own needs and/or to moderate a 10 steps workshop.

• Pohl, C., Krütli, P., & Stauffacher, M. (2017). Ten reflective steps for rendering research societally

by BinBin Jiang Pearce, Tineke Ruijgh - van der Ploeg, Saskia Postema

Introduction

The workshop explores how design thinking and systems thinking can be brought together in transdisciplinary settings to enable students to grow beyond what is expected of them in academia and to make the contribution to society that they long to do. The deployment of such an approach also aims to bolster the problem-solving capacity of the community in which students’ learning takes place. In bringing design and systems thinking together, students learn not only to analyse the complexities and interconnections of system they are studying, but also to act within the system given these complexities. The iterative approach in design thinking also allows actors’ perspectives to be incorporated into problem framing and the co-design of prototypes. For transdisciplinary learning approaches, this enables students to empathize and value different ways of knowing through concrete actions rather than intention only.

Relating systems thinking and design is not a new idea, as the label “systemic design” has been adopted by a growing number of scholars and practitioners. Starting from Buchanan’s (1992) “design thinking for wicked problems”, to Norman and Stapper’s (2015) “DesignX” and the development of the Systemic Design Toolkit – identification of conceptual links has led to concrete tools and methods for realizing this integration. While acknowledging and incorporating the inputs of actors and stakeholders has been implicitly important to many systemic design approaches, references to transdisciplinary mindsets, processes and practices have not been made explicit nor have they been fully explored.

This is the chasm we aim to cross in developing a textbook for complex problem-solving integrating systems thinking, design thinking and transdisciplinary approaches. The context of our work is to guide Master’s students with engineering and policy backgrounds to work through wicked problems within complex socio-technical systems (i.e., energy, transportation and ICT). The approach builds on both innovative curriculum that was developed at TU Delft for the Master’s programme on Complex Systems Engineering and Management and for the Bachelor’s programme at ETH Zurich on Environmental System Science (Pohl et. al 2020). However, the new developments take previous learnings and implements them for complex, socio-technical systems and taking into account both policy and engineering perspectives.

Goal of workshop

The aim of the workshop is to share an integrated systems and design thinking methodology that could be adapted for a variety of transdisciplinary contexts. Together with a community practitioner working at the interface of the university and communities, we share lessons learned about applying this approach. We look forward to receiving feedback from participants who will themselves experience specific methods and tools from an upcoming book for integrating systems and design thinking. As an outcome of the workshop, we hope to initiate a network of people who are interested in future collaborations in further developing design, systems thinking and TD approaches for education.

Target group

Our target audience are for all who are interested or curious about incorporating systemic design approaches in their educational activities, as well as practitioners who would like to provide insights into how to improve these activities with the communities in mind.

We would like to broaden our point of view by inviting other educators and practitioners through three specific explorations:

• How might an integrated systems and design approach enable students to develop skills for joint problem framing?

• How might this approach be used to help students develop knowledge for implementation of transformative solutions?

• How might this approach help students to consider the unintended consequences of designed actions?

The proposed format of the workshop:

• 15 min Introduction to Integrated Systems and Design Thinking

• 10 min Educational context from a community practitioner's perspective

• 50 min Exercises on joint problem framing and exploring unintended consequences. Then, debrief of exercises: What are your insights about these exercises and their intended purpose?

• 15 min Next steps for collaboration and feedback

Key readings:

• Buchanan, R. (1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues, 8(2), 5. https://doi.org/10.2307/1511637

• Pohl, C., Pearce, B., Mader, M., Senn, L., & Krütli, P. (2020). Integrating systems and design thinking in transdisciplinary case studies. GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 29(4), 258–266. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.29.4.11

by Carole B. Rapo, Nicolas P. Gruber, David N. Bresch, Pius Krütli

The purpose of this presentation is to showcase the learnings of two years of a new lifelong learning educational programme on Climate Innovation offered at ETH Zurich. The focus is on transformative learning for societal transformation, the roles of peers, as well as career perspectives. Mitigation of and adaptation to climate change requires deeply transformative changes of all systems and overall society towards net zero emissions. With these wicked challenges in mind, we designed a new programme, with the intend to equip climate leaders with the adequate skills and knowledge to lead the transition in their own institutions/sectors, and beyond. We believe that the CAS participants are not only learners but experts and that they can provide important insights to other participants by sharing their own experience on the path to net zero. The Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Climate Innovation is offered by the Department of Environmental Systems Science (D-USYS) at ETH Zurich. It is a “Science into Practice” programme, which is based on: System knowledge, Transformational learning experience, Network activation, with an emphasis on Dialogue and Exchange. Methodologically, the CAS combines the theory of change (Belcher et al. 2020) and design thinking methods (Taimur et al. 2023) with the application to the systemic issues (Rich Picture, Checkland and Poulter 2020) associated with the path towards net zero emissions, thereby using inputs from relevant stakeholders and practitioners in the field of Climate Innovation. The CAS builds on knowledge, concepts and lessons learned from many educational offerings at ETH Zurich. It also benefits from the problem-solving methodology developed by the TdLab at D-USYS, which has been honed for many years in the BSc course “Umweltproblemlösen” (Pohl et al. 2020). This methodology not only catalysed the transformative process and experience of the participants, but it also enables the participants to analyse the causes of and factors relevant to complex problems, as well as to develop relevant and impactful solutions related to them. We are also employing a 10-step approach to stimulate explicit reflections around ways to render research more societally relevant (Pohl et al. 2017). Based on the collected feedback, as well as testimonials, the first edition of the CAS was a success in terms of knowledge transfer. The participants felt equipped with the necessary tools to lead the transition in their own context. In 2024, peer-coaching sessions will be introduced so to strengthen the leadership component of the programme, as well as pre-/post-assessments based on the Inner Development Goals for the learning diaries. Secondly, we will continue to investigate the springboard effect of attending the CAS. Many alumni have already transitioned to new roles, such as taking on a leading position in a political party in Switzerland. We will continue to learn from the pathways taken by the alumni, grow a community of like-minded individuals with an affinity for societal transformation with the goal in mind to find new formats to catalyse the transition towards net zero emissions.

by Chuma Mbambo-Lado

The need for more transdisciplinary collaborations to tackle society's complex challenges is widely acknowledged in theory. However, the empirical landscape lacks substantial examples of how to operationalize such collaborations effectively. The SPRING Consortium, an initiative aimed at addressing health inequalities in Rotterdam neighbourhoods under the Resilient Delta Initiative, serves as a pertinent case study, providing insights into the challenges inherent in establishing and sustaining transdisciplinary research consortia. Since its inception, the SPRING consortium has undergone significant evolution. While it garners considerable interest from various sectors of society eager to engage in transdisciplinary research on health inequalities and well-being, its growth trajectory resembles that of Frankenstein, making it difficult for the initial partners to maintain a clear connection with its original vision. Drawing from participant experiences within the initiative since 2021, the proposed presentation will delve into systemic, design, and interpersonal aspects of developing a transdisciplinary consortium. Employing qualitative methods and a joint timeline mapping approach, the research unveils pivotal milestones in the consortium’s development, shedding light on some enabling and inhibiting factors for transdisciplinary collaborations. Key enabling factors identified include co-creating a shared vision, securing funding, establishing good governance, and aligning research approaches. Conversely, the absence or lack of clarity in these areas manifests as various challenges within the consortium. The findings also underscore the importance of experiential learning and knowledge integration as essential elements for ensuring continuous learning and shaping the consortium. The evolving nature of SPRING underscores the critical role of shared visioning in laying the foundation for constructive governance arrangements and collaborative endeavours. This presentation provides a reflection that will provide lessons for the ITD research community, emphasizing the need for adaptable governance structures and intentional collaboration in addressing complex societal challenges, thereby guiding future initiatives toward meaningful societal impact.

by Giulia Galluccio, Mathilde Joly

In the current academic landscape, the pursuit of sustainability transcends disciplinary boundaries. As the challenges of the Anthropocene intensify, the imperative of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches becomes increasingly evident.

In this context, the Future Earth Research School (FERS) was launched in 2022 by the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change Foundation (CMCC), with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region in order to foster collaboration and innovation through transformative educational pathways dedicated to young researchers and professionals committed to addressing global environmental challenges from diverse disciplinary perspectives. How does the innovative approach employed by the Future Earth Research School (FERS) transcend disciplinary research silos to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and education among young scholars and better respond to the vast and multifaceted challenges of climate change?

As humanity grapples with the ramifications of climate change and strives for equitable access to resources, the role of research is no longer simply the production of knowledge for knowledge's sake but the urgency to provide solutions to these upcoming challenges. With this aim, FERS School emerges as a catalyst for this purpose, poised to shape the transition to sustainability in the years to come, from science to decision-making and from decision-making to action.

Providing intensive two week-courses at the premises of the CEUB venue on the background of the amazing Italian lanscape, FERS School aims to equip participants with the knowledge and tools necessary for building a fertile ground for innovative research pathways and navigating the complexities of the impact of climate change. It offers a unique opportunity for early-career researchers to meet and collaborate with international experts and engaging in a dialogue that transcends existing academic boundaries and aims to forge lasting collaborations that extend in time and space beyond the program timeline.

This video presents the perspective of international participants from the thematic course based on Adaptation and sustainable risk management held on October 2022, as well as the dialogue it has facilitated between different disciplines. It shows how FERS aggregates an international community of motivated, open-minded participants who are eager to deepen the scientific foundation that is needed to address the most advanced challenges of the future, to cultivate the necessary systemic and multidisciplinary approach, to improve their ingenuity to identify solutions and drive change. Site visits, practical activities and seminars have been unique opportunities for young professionals, PhD students and post-docs to work together and share experiences.

by Marconi Edson Esmeraldo Albuquerque, Lillian Maria Araujo de Rezende Alvares

Science and Technology has played an important role in the production of knowledge and the development of technologies to tackle societal emergencies and challenges. Currently, there is a debate regarding the necessity of placing more emphasis on collaborative research ways due to the complexity of societal problems and concerns. Transdisciplinary research entails interaction between researchers from many scientific fields and non-academic actors, identifying and structuring research problems, and determining how research questions relate to real-world problems. The co-production of knowledge that arises from transdisciplinary research is critical for bridging the gap between science and society and generating scientific and social progress. Research funding agencies play an important role in promoting transdisciplinary research, providing financial resources and supporting researchers and institutions that can contribute to the advancement of science and tackle societal issues. However, this approach has not been adopted at the necessary scale and speed, largely due to the conservatism of these organizations, strongly anchored in the linear model of doing science.

The aim of this study is to analyze how the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) – an important government agency dedicated to fostering scientific and technological research and training human resources for research activities in Brazil – has been dealing with the issue of transdisciplinarity in its guidelines and strategic orientations, as well as in its instruments and practices for funding research. Therefore, it is an exploratory and qualitative investigation, which makes use of a bibliographical review, desk research and the realization of a structured panel according to the focus group technique with some CNPq’s civil servants involved in the construction and management of programs and public calls for proposals for research, to seek evidences that allows us a greater understanding of how transdisciplinary research has been treated by CNPq. This group dynamics aimed to promote a structured conversation process for sharing ideas and knowledge in order to create collective intelligence. Through it, the participants debated three structured topics on the theme of the research: 1) the technical staff's understanding of the promotion of transdisciplinary research at the CNPq; 2) their perception about the institutionalization of the theme of transdisciplinary research in institutional capacity-building efforts; and 3) obstacles and challenges to increasing the CNPq's contribution to solving socially relevant problems by promoting transdisciplinary co-production. An analysis of the CNPq’s official planning and strategy documents revealed that transdisciplinarity has been considered as a future driver for the institution, and that fostering it would boost that institution's social impact. However, according to the results of the focus group meeting, although some inter and transdisciplinary research projects have been supported in recent years, few transdisciplinary calls have been launched, indicating that the institution has taken little practical and effective action to promote transdisciplinary co-production.

by Martine Veldhuizen, Hanneke van Eijken, Marjolein Cremer, Febe de Vos, Sanne Elling, Kila van der Starre, Paul Bijl, Bald de Vries, Christina Jeppesen de Boer, Iris Bakx, Marijke de Belder, Emanuel van Dongen

In this session, we will explore the insights drawn from our collective experiences as a design and teaching team involved in the interdisciplinary and interfaculty undergraduate minor program at Utrecht University known as the minor Language, Law, and Culture. The focus of this session is on discussing methodologies aimed at developing sustainable interdisciplinary education initiatives that connect various faculties. Our goal is to foster an open dialogue surrounding the promises and challenges inherent in designing interdisciplinary undergraduate teaching initiatives. We'll candidly discuss both the successes and areas for improvement, reflecting on what worked well and where we could have done things differently. Essentially, we'll explore the lessons learned from the process of designing this minor.

The iconic scene from Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter’s tea party, serves as a metaphor for the sense of discovery and creativity we encountered as a collaborative team of educators and designers from Law, Humanities, the Centre of Academic Teaching and Interdisciplinary Education. Much like the Mad Hatter's Tea Party symbolises unconventional thinking, we argue that creativity is pivotal in interdisciplinary teaching, serving as a conduit for tackling problems from diverse perspectives and fostering innovation. Emphasising creativity as a cornerstone of success, the session delineates the iterative design, testing, and revision process underpinning the minor's evolution.

In Utrecht University's minor Language, Law, and Culture students discover new perspectives on societal matters influenced by linguistic, legal, and cultural dynamics. Essential themes encompass storytelling, interpretation, forensic linguistics and human rights. Graduates of this program can apply the acquired knowledge and skills to diverse career paths, including legal practice, academia, policymaking, communication strategies, journalism, and education.

The minor is affiliated with a broader theme at Utrecht University known as the 'strategic theme' Institutions for Open Societies, with more than 600 academics from various faculties and social partners. The minor aligns with its key objective, to foster interdisciplinary collaborations and growth as academics and students to effectively tackle the challenges of our time and contribute to the advancement of open and resilient societies worldwide.

This session embarks on a reflective journey through the design and execution of the minor from 2018 to 2024. Theoretical underpinnings and practical challenges are scrutinized. From navigating administrative hurdles to celebrating incremental victories, the session offers insights into the intricacies of interdisciplinary education design and implementation. The session also highlights the imperative of continuous lobbying for support and recognition, emphasizing the value of team cohesion, trust and collaboration. We also share our experience of having an integration expert on our design team, as proposed in the article by Hoffmann, S., Deutsch, L., Klein, J.T. et al (2021). We provide tangible examples highlighting the valuable contribution of an integration expert in our design endeavours. We eagerly anticipate the insights and opinions of session participants on this aspect.

We acknowledge the significance of creativity and play within the design process as well as within the minor itself. Various learning activities are implemented to encourage the further development of students’ creative thinking skills. Creative thinking is identified as an important aspect of interdisciplinary research. Creativity is needed to connect disciplinary insights towards a more comprehensive understanding of complex problems (Repko and Szostak 2021, 329-331). Hence, we’ve employed innovative approaches that complement the minor's objectives and will share some examples. For instance, we incorporated role-playing centered on an 18th-century court case regarding freedom of speech. Additionally, we utilize an escape room activity to immerse students from various disciplines in personal narratives concerning human rights issues.

Creative writing also plays a crucial role in our minor. The minor teaches students to not only reflect on the versatility of language in their future practice within a legal and societal context but also to develop their voice as writers. It equips them with a toolkit to employ language as a grammatical, literary, social and communicative medium in the context of law, thus enhancing their communicative skills. Inspired by the core principles of the well-known study book Habits of the Creative Mind, our goal is to elevate students' writing abilities by reshaping their thinking habits. Following the book's philosophy, we aspire for our students to evolve as writers who exhibit curiosity and creativity in their future career paths. Participants of this session will therefore engage in a playful creative writing exercise mirroring the interdisciplinary teaching style of the minor, delving into disciplinary overlaps and differences. We will discuss writing assignments tailored for students to explore ways to harness the narrative power within legal contexts.

Take a sip from a teacup and join us as we discuss both accomplishments and possible failures in the field of crafting interdisciplinary education, exemplified by designing and implementing the minor Language, Law, and Culture. Let’s step into the whimsical ambience of the Mad Hatter's tea party, where creativity knows no bounds.

Key readings

• Hoffmann, S., Deutsch, L., Klein, J.T. et al (2022). ‘Integrate the integrators! A call for establishing academic careers for integration experts.’ Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9, 147. [DOI: https://doi-org.proxy.library.uu.nl/10.1057/s41599-022-01138-z]

• Miller, Richard E. & Ann Jurecic (2020), Habits of the Creative Mind: A Guide to Reading, Writing & Thinking. 2nd edition. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's: Macmillan Learning.

• Repko, A.F. and R. Szostak (2021). Interdisciplinary Research: Process and Theory. 4th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

by Annemarie Horn, Anke de Vrieze

Abstract

We’ve got to integrate; but how?! While knowledge integration is considered a key characteristic of interdisciplinarity, it is also widely acknowledged as one of its biggest mysteries and challenges. We may not be able to provide a recipe, but how can we learn to cook?

In this workshop, we’ll peek inside the black box of knowledge integration. Through engaging in creative exercises, participants will reflect on their own experiences with knowledge integration. The insights that emerge from those reflections as well as the experiences with the creative exercises are intended to support participants in future integration processes. While knowledge integration is contextual, complex and open-ended, reflective practices can help foster conditions for knowledge integration. Besides practicing with tools that participants can bring home, we’ll also share insights from ongoing action research into knowledge integration processes in interdisciplinary collaboration practices at the Centre for Unusual Collaboration.

Workshop outline

Knowledge integration is often considered a key characteristic of inter- and transdisciplinary research, distinguishing it from other forms of cross-disciplinary approaches such as multidisciplinarity (Klein 2017; Pohl et al. 2021). As such, conducting inter- and transdisciplinary research demands knowledge integration in practice. However, integration is often highly challenging and a bottleneck to engage in inter- and transdisciplinary research (Godemann 2008; Lawrence et al. 2022; Cairns, Hielscher, and Light 2020). Therefore, guiding, leading, supporting, and facilitating inter- and transdisciplinary research asks for support in knowledge integration (Hoffmann, Weber, and Mitchell 2022). Several tools and approaches that support knowledge integration processes in practice have been developed and are described in the literature, such as the CoNavigator tool (Lindvig, Hillersdal, and Earle 2017) and Dialogue Toolbox (Hubbs, O’Rourke, and Orzack 2021; Eigenbrode et al. 2007), and step-wise integration process detailed by Repko & Szostak (2020). However, integration is also understood as a complex, open-ended, contextual, and plural phenomenon (Pohl et al. 2021), that can be described in terms of its inputs, processes and outcomes (O’Rourke, Crowley, and Gonnerman 2016). This raises the question how to support inter- and transdisciplinary teams in knowledge integration by providing practical support while also doing justice to this complex and plural understanding of knowledge integration.

The Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) also observed challenges with knowledge integration in the inter- and transdisciplinary projects they support. CUCo provides training, coaching, and tools to the teams that they support through seed funding (Spark) and funding for research projects (UCo). The CUCo training and support underscores disciplinary grounding, perspective taking, common ground and integration as key processes and competencies. Especially in relation to how to ‘do’ as well as stimulate, facilitate and support integration many questions remain. Challenges among the Spark and UCo team include: how to bring together knowledges that are far removed rom each other, how to organize and ensure integration as a continuous process throughout the projects, and how to ensure integration (degrees, forms) that are appropriate for research objectives. In response to those observations, CUCo decided to make knowledge integration a central theme in 2024 and we conducted accompanying action research on how integration emerges and can be further facilitated and supported in unusual collaborations.

For the ITD conference, we provide a 90-minute workshop based on interactive workshops about knowledge integration that we ran with UCo and Spark teams in March 2024. We take the metaphor of “knowledge integration as cooking” as a red thread. How can distinct ingredients be turned into a cohesive and tasty dish, and how can one engage in and learn this art beyond recipe following? As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, participants to the ITD workshop will be put to work to engage in reflections on inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge integration. Moreover, we will provide preliminary insights from our experiences with the Spark and UCo teams to inform participants of the workshop about the insights on knowledge integration that those sessions brought us. Representatives of Spark and/or UCo teams will be present and actively participate in the workshop to share their experiences with knowledge integration as well as more generally with engaging in ‘unusual collaboration’.

The workshop will be offered with roughly the following schedule:

1. Opening and introduction

• Introduction to the CUCo approach

• Introduction to interdisciplinary knowledge integration in unusual collaborations

• Rationale behind and goals for the workshop

2. WHAT do you integrate? - Interactive “building blocks”-based exercise on making sense of, and reflecting on, experienced team diversity and its implications for collaboration and integration.

3. WHO integrates? - interactive exercise on organizing integration responsibility in inter- and transdisciplinary teamwork.

4. HOW to integrate? - interactive exercise on aspired and actual degrees of knowledge integration and reflection on their implications for knowledge integration and collaboration.

5. Joint reflection and preliminary insights:

• Participants to the workshop are invited to reflect on their experiences with the interactive activities about the WHAT, WHO and HOW of knowledge integration in inter- and transdisciplinary teamwork.

• Participants from UCo and Spark teams share their experiences.

• The organizers share some aggregated insights from all UCo and Spark teams based on the sessions in March 2024.

6. Wrap-up

Through this set-up we aim to bring participants to the workshop the following:

• The opportunity to engage in reflection on knowledge integration practices in their own inter- and transdisciplinary research activities;

• Inspiration on creative tooling for reflection on inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge integration that they may want to also implement in their own inter- and transdisciplinary research context; and

• Insight into inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge integration practices by exchange with and learning from the experiences of other participants in the workshop and the UCo and Spark teams.

This workshop is offered in a collaboration between Annemarie Horn and CUCo. Annemarie Horn is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University who studies practices of inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration and integration in projects and teams. She conducts – among others – research in the context of the UCo and Spark teams that receive support from CUCo. From CUCo, Anke de Vrieze is involved in her role of Knowledge and Learning Officer. The collaborative nature of this workshop is also representative of the collaborative nature of this research and its dual goal of improving as well as understanding knowledge integration practices in inter- and transdisciplinary teamwork. This collaboration allows us to combine the practical knowledge, experiences, and creative tooling from CUCo with empirical analysis and theoretical underpinnings from the research perspective.

References

• Cairns, Rose, Sabine Hielscher, and Ann Light. 2020. “Collaboration, Creativity, Conflict and Chaos: Doing Interdisciplinary Sustainability Research.” Sustainability Science 15 (6): 1711–21. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-020-00784-z.

• Eigenbrode, Sanford D., Michael O’rourke, J. D. Wulfhorst, David M. Althoff, Caren S. Goldberg, Kaylani Merrill, Wayde Morse, et al. 2007. “Employing Philosophical Dialogue in Collaborative Science.” BioScience 57 (1): 55–64. https://doi.org/10.1641/B570109.

• Godemann, Jasmin. 2008. “Knowledge Integration: A Key Challenge for Transdisciplinary Cooperation.” Environmental Education Research 14 (6): 625–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620802469188.

• Hoffmann, Sabine, Christine Weber, and Cynthia Mitchell. 2022. “Principles for Leading, Learning, and Synthesizing in Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research.” BioScience 72 (10): 963–77. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac057.

• Hubbs, Graham, Michael O’Rourke, and Steven Hecht Orzack, eds. 2021. The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative: The Power of Cross-Disciplinary Practice. First edition. Boca Raton London New York: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.

• Klein, Julie Thompson. 2017. “Typologies of Interdisciplinarity: The Boundary Work of Definition.” In Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, edited by Robert Frodeman, Julie T. Klein, and Roberto C.S. Pacheco, 2nd ed., 21–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Lawrence, Mark G., Stephen Williams, Patrizia Nanz, and Ortwin Renn. 2022. “Characteristics, Potentials, and Challenges of Transdisciplinary Research.” One Earth 5 (1): 44–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.12.010.

• Lindvig, Katrine, Line Hillersdal, and David Earle. 2017. “Interdisciplinary Tool Helps Fast-Track Interdisciplinary Learning and Collaboration.” Integrative Pathways 39 (2): 3–6.

• O’Rourke, Michael, Stephen Crowley, and Chad Gonnerman. 2016. “On the Nature of Cross-Disciplinary Integration: A Philosophical Framework.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 56 (April): 62–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.10.003.

• Pohl, Christian, Julie Thompson Klein, Sabine Hoffmann, Cynthia Mitchell, and Dena Fam. 2021. “Conceptualising Transdisciplinary Integration as a Multidimensional Interactive Process.” Environmental Science & Policy 118 (April): 18–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.12.005.

• Repko, Allen F., and Rick Szostak. 2020. Interdisciplinary Research Process and Theory. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications

by Mark Lu

Much of the existing research on transdiciplinarity in education has focused on the student experience: that is, ways to scope transdisciplinary projects, as well as strategies to encourage students to think across disciplinary boundaries and integrate multiple perspectives when tackling a complex problem. An area that is still under researched is the role of the teacher in facilitating a transdisciplinary module or project – in particular, the extent of agency they have in the classroom. This is important because the teacher must play an active role in enacting the curriculum to suit the needs of a transdisciplinary class, where students come from diverse backgrounds.

Teacher agency is the extent of control that teachers have in their classroom and in their professional development. It is enhanced when there is personal and shared meaning of the curriculum, a sense of personal mastery over the subject, and a sense of connection and collaboration to develop change agentry (Hoban, 2002; Fullan, 2007; Ngyuen and Bui, 2016). This presentation will focus on the role of teacher agency in the following two aspects of a transdisciplinary classroom:

(i) Co-creation of lesson materials and classroom experiences: teachers should be empowered to adapt lesson materials, pacing and modes of delivery to suit the diversity of students in a transdisciplinary classroom;

(ii) Differentiating assessments: teachers should be empowered to adapt assessments and negotiate standards with students to allow for innovation and emergence to take place.

Using Singapore Polytechnic’s Media, Arts & Design School as a case study, this presentation will share the experiences of lecturers who developed and taught a series of three transdisciplinary project-based modules. In particular, how teacher agency is deliberately built into the lesson plans and assessments (based on the dimensions mentioned above), the ways teachers responded to and enacted their agency in their lesson materials and assessments, and finally, how teacher agency may have impacted learning outcomes. It is hoped that this presentation will generate greater discussion and research into the area of teacher agency and its impact on learning outcomes in a transdisciplinary classroom.

by Silke Kleihauer, Martin Führ, Jonas Rehn-Groenendijk, Rebecca Niebler, Helena Müller

The presentation introduces a coherent methodological concept, the Transment Approach: It draws on 25 years of experience in td-research (still fundamental Jahn et al. 2012/ Lang et al. 2012) with transformative ambition (Wiek and Lang 2016 ). It was further refined in the 5-years project "System innovations for sustainable development" in which it was tested in four different regional and transnational problem constellations:

• Future-orientated urban development

• Sustainable chemistry in the leather supply chains

• Interactive local heating networks

• Innovative regional mobility

The Transment Approach takes up sustainability challenges and related socio-ecological problems discussed in public and for which a general normative orientation already exists (Wuelser et al. 2012); e.g. in the context of the “European Green Deal” or the United Nations.

When addressing these real-word challenges change processes in the societal practices (Hirsch Hardorn et al. 2006) towards the “safe operating space” according to the planetary boundary concept are needed (Rockström et al. 2009; Richardson et al. 2023).

The challenge is, on the one hand, to integrate different interests and goals, but on the other hand also to overcome the established routines of the status quo. This involves the problem of managing a process that starts with a large number of mental models (Pearce & Ejderyan (2020).

For scientists who have not grown into the necessary procedure through trial and error, the roles and tasks associated with these processes are uncharted territory. A variety of roles have been identified (c.f. Hilger et al. 2021, Bulten et al. 2021, Wittmayer et al. 2014).

In our five-year project, we realised that there was a need to simplify this diversity of tasks and to formulate clear role expectations that can be fulfilled in day-to-day research. The Transment Approach responds to this demand by accompanying the actors step-by-step from the definition of the problem to joint solution generation. In doing so, the actors from science take on three different roles:

• Member of an interdisciplinary team: A common set of categories and criteria can help an interdisciplinary research group to develop a joint understanding of the problem. The Transment Approach draws on the heuristic of the interdisciplinary institutional analysis (Bizer & Führ 2015).

• expert in a transdisciplinary team: The process is based on the three-phase research approach that has emerged over the last 30 years in the context of sustainability research (still fundamental: Jahn et al. 2012)

• navigator of the team dynamics: Not only cognitive processes need to be taken into account, but also beneficial emotional and social-interactional conditions need to be created so that joint integration processes can succeed. Methods such as the scenario technique combined with a cross-impact analysis and a theory of change can help to constructively steer a transdisciplinary process.

The presentation will highlight the challenges in phases A to C of a transdisciplinary project. Understanding and practising these three roles helps scientists in the process to orientate themselves better and makes it easier to manage their own expectations and those of others adequately.

We would be delighted to exchange ideas with td-researchers who are dealing with similar problem constellations. What are their experiences, what do they do differently, what is similar? What results do they achieve?

Key readings

• Kleihauer, S./Führ M./Niebler R.: The Transment Approach. Scrollytelling https://itp.h-da.de/themen/transformative-prozesse-gestalten/transment-ansatz/scrollytelling.

by Chantal Velthuis, Erwin van Harmelen

Many universities have the ambition to learn students to collaborate in interdisciplinary teams to prepare students for addressing wicked problems. Interdisciplinary collaboration crosses boundaries of disciplines to achieve common goals (Huibers et al., 2012). Four processes are involved in interdisciplinary collaboration (Boix Mansilla et al., 2010;2016): establishing common goals, value disciplinary knowledge present in the team, integrating relevant insights and remaining critical to different (and one's own) disciplines. These processes are not always observed in interdisciplinary student teams (Van Harmelen e.a, 2021). In order to improve interdisciplinary education it is important to gain insight in the collaboration process and what makes students work interdisciplinary.

In this study seven project teams of 6 to 8 third-year students working on a wicked problems, such as the design of a bottle disinfector, were followed during a semester. Students collaborated for the first time with students from at least two other disciplines, like health, arts, economics or engineering. Each team is guided by a tutor. To gain insight in the content and research-related knowledge they integrated, two sessions were conducted (in week 5 and 15). The team created a mindmap to illustrate the knowledge each discipline contributed to the issue and indicated the intersections where integration took place between disciplines. Next, students individually responded to statements that revealed how the team organized collaboration. Additional interviews were conducted with students and tutors with the central question: What caused/hindered the project group to start working together interdisciplinary?

Results showed that students from three teams started in subgroups with disciplines that are closely related. Within these subgroups interdisciplinary integration occurred, such as Mechatronics and Mechanical Engineering students collaborating on a technical solution. However, there was a lack of criticism between subgroups. Subgroups seemed to respect each other's expertise and took information from the other group for granted.

In only one team, integration took also place between disciplines that were further apart.

Two other teams realized with help of their tutor that interdisciplinary collaboration is also about integrating knowledge of research methodologies. These teams made eventually use of each other's expertise in research. In the last two teams, there was hardly any use of each other's expertise. They merged sub-tasks into a final product without cohesion.

Attention to interdisciplinary collaboration by the tutor or through structural feedback moments resulted in students’ awareness around their interdisciplinary competencies. It also proved helpful for interdisciplinary collaboration when groups adopted a common approach such as SCRUM or design thinking. Finally, the mindmap-activity used in the research sessions appeared to have given students insight into each other's expertise.

In conclusion, students working on wicked problems in interdisciplinary teams, did not automatically use each other's knowledge and research skills. It appeared to be important to guide students in interdisciplinary collaboration and doing learning activities focused on interdisciplinary collaboration. Furthermore, we advise to start with narrow interdisciplinary collaborations, as broad interdisciplinary collaborations seems to too difficult or to offer students more support in broad interdisciplinary collaborations.

by Chet McLeskey, Michael O'Rourke, Marisa Rinkus

One of our most important technologies is the research discipline, i.e., the “quasi-institutional” structure that produces knowledge in a limited range through organized, social interaction (O’Rourke et al. 2019). Research disciplines and their problems grow up together: on the one hand, a discipline’s problems are described in its language and are amenable to its methods; on the other, a discipline grows and changes as it grapples with the problems it takes on. Thus, the problems that occupy a discipline tend to be discipline-sized problems. Unfortunately, the problems that confront our communities, our countries, and our planet are not discipline-sized problems. While they overlap with disciplinary problems, they have no respect for disciplinary boundaries.

Complex problems like these require complex responses, where that involves assembling different epistemic perspectives on a problem and combining them to address its dynamically interrelated characteristics. A number of research modalities have been described going back to the 1920s that are motivated by the need to meet complex problems with complex responses, such as multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity. As a research modality, convergence is a relatively recent entry. Over the past two decades, there has been an increasing amount of work on convergence, spurred on by interest from the US National Academies, the National Research Council, and National Science Foundation (e.g., NASEM 2019). Despite increased attention to convergence, there has been no consensus about the concept, although not for lack of trying (see Frechtling et al. 2021). This lack of consensus means that no standardized conception of convergence grounds the systematic development of convergence programs and projects or the consistent evaluation of convergence proposals or products. Of course, convergence could simply be a banner that agencies and investigators wave to indicate their support for more expansive, boundary-spanning research, in which case standardization would be unnecessary; in this presentation, though, we assume that it is a technical concept for classifying a specific type of scientific activity, and as such it should be developed with enough precision to be rigorously applied.

In this presentation we will briefly summarize the literature on convergence to reveal different senses and streams of thought that underscore the lack of conceptual consensus. We will also address two theoretical research questions: what is convergence? and how does convergence compare with interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity? In doing so, we present a perspective on the nature of convergence and then describe four models of convergence as a process, drawn from the literature, that we relate to the standard spectrum of crossdisciplinary research modalities (e.g., multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinarity). We close by considering the theorist’s challenge when it comes to convergence and the implications that has for the empirical investigation of convergence research.

• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). (2019). Fostering the culture of convergence in research: Proceedings of a workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

• O’Rourke, M., Crowley, S., Laursen, B. K., Robinson, B., Vasko, S. E. (2019). Disciplinary diversity in teams, integrative approaches from unidisciplinarity to transdisciplinarity. In K. L. Hall, A. L. Vogel, and R. T. Croyle (Eds.), Advancing Social and Behavioral Health Research through Cross-Disciplinary Team Science: Principles for Success. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 21–46.

by Michael Y. Schakelaar, Maria A. Hegeman, Quique Bassat, Francisco J. Eiroa-Orosa, Sonam P. Banka-Cullen, David McDonagh, Catherine M. Comiskey, Krisztián V. Kasos, Katalin Felvinczi, Jan C.M. Haarhuis, Annet C. van Riet, Toine ten Broeke, Sandra Crnko, Niels Bovenschen

Challenge

Life, disease prevention, and health(care) are rapidly evolving. This demands for future professionals that can address grand challenges to reach societal impact. For this, so-called 4C skills (collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving) are essential. The existing curricula in higher education have to be expanded so students are connected to a wide spectrum of disciplines, (inter)national partners, and (extra-academic) stakeholders. We believe that the transition towards globally-oriented transdisciplinary challenge-based education as an innovative framework in higher education is the appropriate way forward. We aimed to develop a novel transdisciplinary, international, challenge-based educational concept, grounded in the theoretical framework of research-based education, to improve transdisciplinarity, academic skills, and motivation in higher education. Research question: “How does this novel educational concept improve student perception of 4C skills, transdisciplinary mindset, and motivation?”

Methods

The novel EU-funded joint-degree Master’s program in Global Challenges for Sustainability, CHARM-EU1 meets this demand. CHARM-EU is a European University that started in September 2021, formed by an alliance of five research-based universities. During the first edition of the CHARM-EU module Health Challenges & Solutions (six-week full-time elective module), we briefed a group of international students through a plenary session with researchers, medical specialists, patients, and stakeholders who all came together in Barcelona2. We posed students the grand challenge: ‘How should the world deal with future pandemics?’. Subsequently, students were divided over three universities to frame hypotheses and execute research from different disciplinary perspectives. To facilitate this, we have developed multiple designated Student Research HUBs – physical and interdisciplinary innovation spaces within the heart of university faculties that have short lines to local research, researchers, faculty, and stakeholders. Transdisciplinary collaboration among these HUBs is reinforced by weekly online plenary work meetings, workshops, lectures, and symposia. This innovative European Student Research HUB network allows students from different disciplinary backgrounds, researchers, faculty, and stakeholders to collaborate transdisciplinary and internationally on a single major societal challenge in the health domain2.

Results

The module was evaluated by anonymized written questionnaires and focus groups focused on transdisciplinarity, academic skills, and motivation. Students appreciated the relevance of the global health challenge and the transdisciplinary collaboration. The educational framework inspired, motivated, and stimulated development of academic skills. Additionally, students valued the journey of doing authentic research and the autonomy they were given during this module.

Conclusion

Altogether, we have showcased a transdisciplinary, challenge-based, international concept in education that positively stimulates student perception of 4C skill development. The current module Health Challenges & Solutions of CHARM-EU has generated synergy between research and education in the life & health domain. The module of European-oriented transdisciplinary challenge-based education allows further upscaling towards a larger Student Research HUB network within and outside Europe with larger variety of disciplines and students.

References

• CHARM-EU. https://www.charm-eu.eu/

• Schakelaar MY, Bassat Q, Comiskey CM, Felvinczi K, Haarhuis JCM, Bovenschen N. Linked research hubs train students to tackle societal challenges. Nature. 2022 Nov;611(7936):449. doi: 10.1038/d41586-022-03665-w. PMID: 36380041.

by Gerardo Moises Gutierrez Rivas

Complexity is perhaps the most essential characteristic of our present world and societies. Reality has rendered multilayered and multi-leveled. This is the reality of the times in which we live; this is the complex actuality in which we must live, work, and lead. Thus, the current complexity that societies face requires leaders and people in general to embrace a more appropriate mindset since mindsets guide how we interpret what we observe from the world and from our interactions because every mindset represents a theory from which one interprets the world. Numerous scholars, thinkers, and researchers have agreed that many of the current knowledge-systems that guide leaders’ mindsets tend not to be appropriate to understand and to respond to the complexity of our multi-levelled and multi-dimensional relationship with the world.

It has been my experience that many graduate programs that claim to be interdisciplinary, are interdisciplinary mainly/only in name because they do not include much regarding the development of the necessary abilities to carry out interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary practice. Even though there has a been a lot of talking regarding the urgent need for collaborative work and research to address the complex problems that the world and our societies are facing today, educators, researchers, professionals, and people in general still struggle engaging in effective interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary practice. With that in mind, I embarked in the task to design and create of a course that introduces doctoral students to the necessary abilities, attitudes, and transformation for interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary practice.

My presentation will address the current lack of clarity regarding the application of interdisciplinary theory and practice within interdisciplinary doctoral programs. I will present the various models and frameworks that have been intricately woven together to assist students develop the necessary abilities, attitudes, and identities that they need to increasingly become interdisciplinary beings/individuals. Key components include reflexive practices, the need for integrative worldviews, the role of intercultural development in interdisciplinary practice, the importance of intellectual and cultural humility, and interdisciplinary leadership.

As part of the presentation, I will include videos of conversation with some of the students who have taken the course. This will be a creative way to integrate contributors from all sorts of backgrounds in my presentation. I will also present/show how journeying with the students throughout the duration of the course (and beyond) render a journey of collaboration and interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary practice and transformation.

By Kiris Cheas

Investigative journalism interrogates the use and misuse of power. It is the most expensive and time-consuming genre of journalism, resembling academic rigor in its methods and complex data. Journalism has generally been characterized by competition, rather than cooperation, between newsrooms. In the 21st century, media outlets finally discovered that by sharing resources, they can lower expenses and enhance the ambition and societal impact of their investigations (Birnbauer, 2019).

Collaborative investigative journalism remains under-researched (Carson 2021). Existing research has discovered that the most important elements by which journalistic collaborations are organized are the duration of time and degree of integration among partner organizations. Using these two variables, Stonbely (2017) identified six models of collaborative journalism: 1) Temporary and separate, 2) Separate and co-creating, 3) Temporary and integrated, 4) On-going and separate, 5) On-going and co-creating, and 6) On-going and integrated, mentioning that the models require more attention as to managing unequal power dynamics. Issues of inequality in North-South journalistic collaborations have since persisted (Center for Cooperative Media 2022).

My work takes on the challenge of extending pre-existing models and creating new models of collaborative investigative journalism, mindful of inequality and power relations between the Global South and the North and between journalists and their investigative partners. The development of these models is, first, rooted in empirical analysis of collaborative investigative coverage across the U.S.-Mexico (Global North-South) border, co-produced between Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Honduran, Mexican, and US investigative journalists and academic researchers exposing abuses against Central American asylum-seekers.

Second, my work draws from typologies of collaboration and integration in multi-, inter- and transdisciplinarity (Klein 2017, 2021). Based on these models and empirical analysis, my presentation argues that some journalistic collaborations resemble multidisciplinarity in that the different specializations remain separate throughout the investigative and publication process. Contra Stonbely’s (2017) models, longer duration of collaboration does not guarantee integration in the multidisciplinary model.

Other journalistic collaborations resemble interdisciplinarity in that the boundaries between disciplines and investigative methods blur, while hierarchies between academic and journalistic professions and regions persist. The finest journalistic collaborations resemble the transdisciplinary model, radically permeating professional and regional boundaries and empowering investigators from the South to lead the way in the integration of voices of relevant stakeholders (in this case, Central American asylum-seekers), showcasing potential for decolonizing investigative practice.

Overall, my paper argues that typologies of multi- inter- and transdisciplinarity provide an important and novel path for the development of models of collaborative investigative journalism, preventing a reinvention of the wheel. Multi- inter- and transdisciplinary research and investigative journalism share many goals: they investigate complex challenges that cannot be understood let alone solved by any individual discipline or media outlet. Both investigative journalists and academics are struggling to maintain their roles as fact-checkers and truth-tellers in the world filled with misinformation. Both journalism and academia have also struggled with lack of diversity and inclusion of voices from the Global South. Yet dialogue between communities specialized in investigative journalism and inter- and transdisciplinarity has been almost non-existent. This paper pushes for further connections.

By Sierra Deutsch, Mirjam Steiger, Jinat Hossain, Norman Backhaus, Clara Guardado

Transformative change, defined as a “fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values” (IPBES, 2019, p. XVIII), is now widely acknowledged as being best supported through transdisciplinary collaborations (Caniglia et al., 2021; Fisher et al., 2022). However, transdisciplinary transformative change initiatives (TTCIs) rarely achieve the paradigmatic changes they aim to deliver (Chambers et al., 2022; Turnhout and Lahsen, 2022). A major cause of this failure has been identified as a lack of common framing of the problem (Brandt et al., 2013; Fisher et al., 2022; Fougères et al., 2022). In other words, due to the different ‘languages’ understood by participants in TTCIs, such initiatives rarely achieve common understandings of the problem they seek to address, and therefore the solutions they aim to develop. While TTCIs have had success in reaching common understandings among natural scientists and non-academic partners, the role of social scientists continues to elude such initiatives (Abson et al., 2017; Chambers et al., 2022). And while some forms of social science (e.g. psychology, economics) are increasingly successfully integrated, critical social scientists – those who use critical theoretical perspectives on structural knowledge/power dynamics and their causal links with socioecological problems - continue to find themselves on the outside of TTCIs (Massarella et al., 2021).

As a part of the Swiss National Science Foundation funded project “Translating Transformations” we are combining sustainability science with political ecology and practitioner knowledge to devise strategies and tools for promoting critical social science (CSS) literacy in TTCIs. We are currently in the first phase of the project where we are conducting ex-post analyses, via questionnaires and interviews, of the transdisciplinary elements of two Swiss programs (ValPar.CH and the University Research Priority Program on Global Change and Biodiversity [URPP GCB]). In our next phase, we plan to develop CSS literacy tools and strategies (henceforth ‘tools’) based on our findings. In this workshop, we hope to test some initial tools that help transdisciplinary researchers think about the role of systems of power in defining a problem and consequently how this limits our ability to co-develop unconventional solutions.

Additionally, for sessions, workshops and trainings:

Workshop objectives

• Advancing understandings of critical social science (CSS) and its potential for enhancing ITD research and practices

• Testing and exchanging on initial CSS literacy tools as part of our iterative co-development process

• Improving reflexivity on structural power dynamics that act as barriers to transformative change

• Initiating collaborations and long term exchanges on the continued development and dissemination of open source CSS literacy tools

Proposed schedule

1. (0’-15’)  Introduction to the project/concept

2. (15’-25’)  Pre-assessment survey

3. (25’-35’)  Introduction to tool(s) and instructions

4. (35’-60’)  Experimenting with the tool(s)

5. (60’-85’)  Guided discussion/feedback/wrap-up

6. (85’-90’)  Post-assessment survey

Detailed description

1) Introduction to the concept. We will provide information on the background of the project, the definition of “critical social science,” and the concept behind the CSS literacy tools.

2) Pre-assessment survey. We will ask participants to take a brief questionnaire on their experience with CSS, and their understanding of structural power dynamics and how these effect ITD processes and outcomes.

3) Introduction to tool(s) and instructions. We will divide the participants into groups of 4-6 and will provide specific information and instructions for each tool.

4) Experimenting with the tool(s). We will allow the participants to work with their assigned tool as we circulate and answer questions.

5) Guided discussion/feedback/wrap-up. We will bring everyone back to the plenary to discuss their experiences with each tool and ask for feedback with guided questions such as:

a. To what extent do you think the tool accomplished its purpose?

b. Which aspects of the tool added to its success and which did not?

c. How could the tool be improved?

d. How comfortable did you feel using the tool and how might we improve users’ ability to provide a safe space for experimenting with the tool?

We will then wrap-up the discussion and thank the participants before asking them to fill out another brief questionnaire.

6) Post-assessment survey. We will ask participants to take another brief questionnaire that we will design to assess any changes in perceptions on CSS and understandings of structural power dynamics and their role in creating barriers to transformative change.

1–3 key readings (optional)

Deutsch, S., Keller, R., Krug, C.B., Michel, A.H. (2023). Transdisciplinary transformative change: An analysis of some best practices and barriers, and the potential of critical social science in getting us there. Biodivers. Conserv. 1–26.

Turnhout, E., Lahsen, M., 2022. Transforming environmental research to avoid tragedy. Clim. Dev. 1–5. 10.1080/17565529.2022.2062287

References cited

• Abson, D.J., Fischer, J., Leventon, J., Newig, J., Schomerus, T., Vilsmaier, U., Von Wehrden, H., Abernethy, P., Ives, C.D., Jager, N.W., 2017. Leverage points for sustainability transformation. Ambio 46, 30–39. 10.1007/s13280-016-0800-y

• Brandt, P., Ernst, A., Gralla, F., Luederitz, C., Lang, D.J., Newig, J., Reinert, F., Abson, D.J., Von Wehrden, H., 2013. A review of transdisciplinary research in sustainability science. Ecol. Econ. 92, 1–15.

• Caniglia, G., Luederitz, C., von Wirth, T., Fazey, I., Martin-López, B., Hondrila, K., König, A., von Wehrden, H., Schäpke, N.A., Laubichler, M.D., 2021. A pluralistic and integrated approach to action-oriented knowledge for sustainability. Nat. Sustain. 4, 93–100. 10.1038/s41893-020-00616-z

• Chambers, J.M., Wyborn, C., Klenk, N.L., Ryan, M., Serban, A., Bennett, N.J., Brennan, R., Charli-Joseph, L., Fernández-Giménez, M.E., Galvin, K.A., 2022. Co-productive agility and four collaborative pathways to sustainability transformations. Glob. Environ. Chang. 72, 102422. 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102422

• Fisher, E., Brondizio, E., Boyd, E., 2022. Critical social science perspectives on transformations to sustainability. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 55, 101160. 10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101160

• Fougères, D., Jones, M., McElwee, P.D., Andrade, A., Edwards, S.R., 2022. Transformative conservation of ecosystems. Glob. Sustain. 5. 10.1017/sus.2022.4

• IPBES, 2019. UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating.’

• Massarella, K., Nygren, A., Fletcher, R., Büscher, B., Kiwango, W.A., Komi, S., Krauss, J.E., Mabele, M.B., McInturff, A., Sandroni, L.T., 2021. Transformation beyond conservation: How critical social science can contribute to a radical new agenda in biodiversity conservation. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 49, 79–87. 10.1016/j.cosust.2021.03.005

• Turnhout, E., Lahsen, M., 2022. Transforming environmental research to avoid tragedy. Clim. Dev. 1–5. 10.1080/17565529.2022.2062287

by Stefanie Burkhart, Flurina Schneider

Questions of power and justice are increasingly discussed as important levers for social-ecological transformations. By centering the knowledge of those concerned and integrating different ways of knowing, transdisciplinarity also aims at transformative outcomes. However, transdisciplinary knowledge production on the ground is always prone to reproducing existing power relations and knowledge hierarchies. How can transdisciplinary practice tackle the challenge of unjust knowledge production? The concept of epistemic justice can help navigate questions of knowledge, power and justice. It specifically addresses whose knowledge counts, whose knowledge is considered valid and whose knowledge is included or excluded. Based on a literature synthesis of how epistemic justice has been operationalized in sustainability science so far, I developed reflection criteria to unpack the concept of epistemic justice. In my presentation, I will introduce these criteria and guiding questions for transdisciplinary practice. I will discuss aspects to consider when designing the conditions in which transdisciplinary knowledge production takes place as well as during knowledge production processes as such, but also deeper interpersonal capabilities and structural constraints that can be addressed individually and collectively. By systematically reflecting on these criteria, researchers and other societal actors are not only able to address normative aims of justice but might also strengthen the transformative potential of transdisciplinary knowledge production.

by Julie Kurris, Maaike Mulder Nijkamp, Ewelina Schraven, Marca Wolfensberger, Anne-Mieke Vandamme, Jan-Peter Sandler, Ella Idsøe, Maryvonne Nieboer

There are great challenges in current times such as climate change and energy transition. To prepare our future professionals to deal with these wicked problems (Marshall, 2008; Rittel & Webber, 1973) and be changemakers, education should move through a pathway from mono-disciplinary teaching to a more transdisciplinary approach of learning (Montesano-Montessori et al., 2019; Tijsma et al., 2023) which goes beyond academia (Augsburg, 2014). In transdisciplinary education, students, teachers, stakeholders from the work field and researchers come together to combine their knowledge and collaborate to solve wicked challenges of the future (Steam+, 2024).  

Today, we notice that there are multiple pioneering educational projects involving transdisciplinary collaboration. However, these initiatives are little interwoven with regular education programs and there are still little overarching initiatives who support the pioneering projects (Horn et al., 2022). Because these pioneering projects pursue the development of transdisciplinary education without much structural knowledge exchange and guiding frameworks, similar findings, mistakes and questions can arise (Tijsma, Urias & Zweekhorst, 2023). In addition, the development of education in/around transdisciplinary collaboration is not always addressed collectively from all perspectives. Different stakeholders go through this process individually, with their own interest, expectations, and approaches, rather than working collectively towards embedding transdisciplinary education (Budwig & Alexander, 2020).

This gap was addressed in a large-scale European project called STEAM+ consisting of 18 partners from 9 countries. The consortium developed the STEAM-TRAIL map (TRAnsdisciplinary Innovation lab): an online instrument that encapsulates insights from existing transdisciplinary labs and three newly established ones, emphasizing the necessity for closer collaboration, clear examples, and actionable steps for implementation. The map serves as a repository of knowledge, guiding universities across Europe in initiating their own labs, thereby facilitating structured knowledge exchange and experience sharing. The map itself is envisioned as a metro map, guiding users through different stages of implementing labs. It addresses the needs of diverse stakeholders by providing role-specific lines and stops, offering general information and practical advice at each stage. The map reflects the project's iterative approach to improving education through transdisciplinary methods and the importance of stakeholder collaboration (Steam+, 2024).

The uniqueness of the tool is grounded in an innovative approach to shaping educational developments through a transdisciplinary lens involving all stakeholders. Therefore, the Avans UAS Research Group on Transdisciplinary Collaboration in Education is developing this STEAM-TRAIL map further into a new online tool called the TRAILtool (Transdisciplinary Innovative Learning) in which the focus shifted from transdisciplinary labs to all educational learning environments and focused on the Netherlands. In collaboration with the University of Twente, the TRAILtool will be enhanced by a physical tool, presented in the proposed workshop.

A new TRAILtool

The new online TRAILtool (www.trailtool.org) symbolizes a more nature-oriented journey, illustrated by the metaphor of a mountain trail in which different stakeholders collaborate to reach the top of the mountain. During this expedition, participants gather information, interesting practices and questions to take into account to create, perform and evaluate transdisciplinary education. During the exploration, the participants learn about the advantages of transdisciplinary collaboration in education, how they can design it, what to consider while running it and how to reflect on it. On the journey to the top, every participant brings their unique perspectives (“backpack”). In camps along the route, data is gathered about the participants, to continue the research about the pains and gains of transdisciplinary education. Furthermore, they can apply reflection tools to reflect on the steps they have taken already.

The content of this instrument is created based on analyzed data gathered through interviews with experts on transdisciplinary education, focus groups with teachers, students, researchers, and policy makers in which the pains and gains on transdisciplinary education were mapped. A major part of the content is also based on existing literature, including the content of the STEAM-TRAILmap developed during STEAM+.

A physical game: the workshop

Based on and contributing to the TRAILtool, a physical game is created that we will play at the conference with participants. The participants are invited to embark on a transdisciplinary journey together to reach the summit. The goal of the game is to collectively determine the type of education needed on a particular wicked problem stated by the workshop leaders. An example used in previous workshops was a wicked problem proposed by a centre of expertise of Avans University of Applied Sciences on the subversion of Youth Criminality. The municipality of Gorinchem requested a transdisciplinary learning community, including students to tackle the problem.

The participants receive a persona based on the four different stakeholders, namely researchers, students, teachers and non-academic partners. To help participants empathize with their given role, the persona's motivations, characteristics, and professional information are provided. From this role and perspective, participants collaboratively explore a metaphorical mountain path, in which they discuss the common goal, which stakeholders should be involved, and which collaborative activities they could embed. Before they start the dialogue, they write down their individual perspective. In this way individual reflection precedes inclusive dialogues with diverse voices.

This physical game explicitly ensures that all interests are heard and more importantly creates a common language to collectively develop education. In this way, a new educational approach is envisioned. The expected outcome of this workshop is to gain insights and inspiration around establishing transdisciplinary education by engaging relevant stakeholders. After the workshop, all participants have access to a website which guides them through similar steps of the workshop to implement this within their own institution.

Collaboration to reach the top

The tool is both original and innovative since it uses a transdisciplinary approach for the development of transdisciplinary education. The key lies in bringing together all relevant stakeholders, enabling them to collaboratively cross boundaries and construct transdisciplinary education that provides all stakeholders with an optimal learning experience. Through the workshop around the TRAILtool, all stakeholders are learning from each other and are challenged to cross boundaries, focusing on the co-creation of a new learning experience. Ultimately, we aim to build transdisciplinary education to educate changemakers of the future through gathering different disciplines and perspectives. 

Practicalities

The workshop is scheduled to last 1,5 hours in which there will be time to explain the STEAM-TRAILmap, presented by an international team of collaborators of STEAM+ and the further developments of the new TRAILtool, presented by researchers from Avans University of Applied sciences (20 minutes). Afterwards, the workshop itself (60 minutes) will take place with a reflection moment on the workshop (10 minutes). We intend to invite various participants from academia such as researchers, teachers, policy makers and preferably also students. Moreover, if societal or industry partners could join, it would be even more interesting. Depending on the number of tables, we intend to have 20 participants (more is negotiable).

• Augsburg, T. (2014). Becoming Transdisciplinary: The Emergence of the Transdisciplinary Individual. World Futures, 70(3–4), 233–247.

• Budwig, N., & Alexander, A. J. (2020). A transdisciplinary approach to student learning and development in university settings. Frontiers in Psychology, 11.

• Horn, A., Scheffelaar, A., Urias, E., & Zweekhorst, M. (2022a). Training Students for Complex Sustainability Issues: A Literature review on the design of inter- and transdisciplinary Higher education. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 24(1), 1–27.

• Marshall, T. (2008). Wicked Problems. In M. Erlhoff & T. Marshall (Eds.), Design Dictionary: Perspectives on Design Terminology (pp. 447-447). Basel: Birkhäuser Basel.   

• Montesano-Montessori, N., Schipper, M., Andriessen, D., & Greven, K. (2019). Bewegen in complexiteit : Voorbeelden voor onderwijs, onderzoek en praktijk.

•  Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155-169.

• Steam+. (2024). TRAIL map. Steam Plus. Consulted on 15 january 2024, van https://steam-plus.vercel.app/trail 

• Tijsma, G., Urias E., & Zweekhorst M.(2023). Embedding engaged education through community service learning in HEI: a review. Educational Research,65(2), 143-169.

by Marie-France Gévry, Keith Lévesque

Climate change in the Arctic and Subarctic regions is a complex issue, and addressing its multifaceted impacts and formulating mitigation and adaptation strategies requires that the next generation of researchers develop proficiencies that transcend disciplinary boundaries. Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada, launched in 2017 the Sentinel North program to help generate the knowledge needed to improve our understanding of the changing northern environment and its impact on humans and their health. As part of this research strategy, a major training program was designed to train a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers who will be leaders in their field, with the skills and collaborative mindset to actively contribute to solving complex scientific problems in a changing North.

Over the years, the Sentinel North program has recruited and trained over 680 graduate students and post-docs, affiliated with eight faculties and 40 different departments. The strategy builds on the diversity of its community, international opportunities, and experiential activities to foster the development of five key competencies in interdisciplinary collaboration: critical thinking, adaptability, communication, creative problem-solving and teamwork and collaboration.

In this presentation, we outline the objectives and main elements of the program's interdisciplinary training strategy, as well as some of the results of our evaluation framework. We will present the aggregated results of a survey of Sentinel North graduates after their participation in the program to assess their satisfaction, measure the impact of the program on their professional development and skills level and gather outcome data concerning their status and employability. The results include information gathered from 154 respondents out of 293 alumni who completed their research projects during the 2017-2023 period.

Preliminary results reveal a positive contribution of the program on the development of interdisciplinary competencies, the development of professional networks within and outside their discipline and show that the programs enable people to specialize while gaining a broader understanding of an issue. The results also highlight the importance of particular activities for the training of graduate students and post-docs and identify the main challenges they encountered when conducting a project in an interdisciplinary context.

Based on our experience, the design and implementation of an effective interdisciplinary training program in academia should take into consideration the following elements: 1) Nurture a collaborative research learning community; 2) Tailor activities on a competency-based approach; 3) Regularly assess the program and adapt the framework to the community; and 4) Beyond individual, train collaborative teams. We will conclude by discussing the future direction of this initiative.

by Corinne Lamain, Emmy Ruiter, Stefanie Ypma, Jonas Colen Ladeia Torrens, Vanessa Timmer

Transdisciplinary collaborations require distinct and increased efforts compared to traditional forms of research, including particular skills, sensitivity and attitudes (e.g., humility, tolerance to difference, empathy, adaptability, power awareness). As the group of session organizers we understand transdisciplinary collaborations as ‘processes of mutual learning between science and society, (...) which embodies a mission of science with society rather than for society’ (Seidl et al. 2013). More specifically we understand transdisciplinary collaborations as processes that integrate knowledge across academic disciplines and societal sectors, to address societal challenges. It is guided by the principle that ‘scientific rigor meets societal relevance’ (free to the Transdisciplinary Field Guide, Utrecht University and van Paassen, et al, 2023).

Enriching the training options offered for transdisciplinary collaborations is key for elevating the quality of the research processes involved. Ample experience and literature demonstrates that bringing together a group of people around a topic or a joint aim is not sufficient for achieving the intended purposes of knowledge integration that should lead to the desired transformations. Attention is needed not just for ‘topic’, but also for ‘team’ and ‘process’, which requires competences, attitudes ad approaches that are distinct from more disciplinary research.

The skills required for transdisciplinary collaborations apply to defining the focal question or problem, determining who, how and why people are involved, and how the collaborative process should develop to account for the distinct backgrounds and needs of the people involved. Excluding relevant voices, or not including them in meaningful ways, could lead to epistemic (in)justice. It could also lead to the failure of the research achieving its potential in terms of transformation, which could for example be achieved through changes in policy frameworks or institutional practices.

In this session we build on four principles for transdisciplinarity that is fair, inclusive and equitable (van Paassen et al., 2023) , which we broaden so as to include ‘transformative’.

1. Address (context-specific) societally relevant issues while maintaining scientific relevance.

2. Embrace complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty.

3. Value and harness plural ways of knowing via co-creating and co-learning.

4. Involve relevant actors in inclusive, fair, and equitable ways.

To do transdisciplinarity that aligns with these principles the collaborators will need to learn and unlearn attitudes and skills that are not commonly trained for in academia and other sectors. The session organisers distinguish different roles in research teams, requiring different (levels of) skills. Teams typically require specific attention for the collaborative process, so that it can indeed contribute to transformation. In the literature it is suggested that a dedicated person should fulfil these roles, a ‘transacademic interface manager (TIM)’ that fulfils the role of a facilitator, mediator, translator, and process innovator (Brundiers, et al, 2013) . A team may also expect all its members to require some level of training.

The Centre for Unusual Collaborations (part of an alliance between Technical University Eindhoven, Wageningen University and Research, Utrecht University and University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands) and Pathways to Sustainability (one of the Strategic Themes of Utrecht University, The Netherlands) and other funding schemes supporting transdisciplinary collaborations can offer training to help initiate engagements and deepen collaborative processes. We propose training modules to strengthen competences for transdisciplinary collaborations. Key competences are:

• listening

• reflecting

• understanding of one's own perspective and biases, which includes exercise on positionality, power balance reflection and stakeholder mapping

• perspective-taking

• integration of different types of knowledge

• systems approaches/holistic thinking

• collaboration (including barriers to participate)

• communication across sectors

• ‘managing’ conflicts

In addition, some more ‘general’ skills are key, such as team work and management, project management, adaptivity, managing expectations and interests, risk assessment, openness and curiosity. We understand learning to be strongly facilitated by embodied and creative approaches.

The session will take the form of a training, in which we will test some of the modules with the participants, followed by a round of reflections.

References

• Seidl, R., Brand, F.S., Stauffacher, M. et al. Science with Society in the Anthropocene. AMBIO 42, 5–12 (2013). https://doi-org.eur.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s13280-012-0363-5

• Barbara van Paassen, Nina de Roo, Jillian Student, Jonas Torrens, Annisa Triyanti (2023) Scoping transdisciplinary collaborations: A principled approach to meaningfully fund and support unusual transdisciplinary encounters, engagements, and collaborations, Centre for Unusual Collaborations. https://drive.google.com/file/d/14AFtnnOznj1aTNhu_egqB-1CU6zkQNAB/view

• Brundiers, K.; Wiek, A.; Kay, B. The Role of Transacademic Interface Managers in Transformational Sustainability Research and Education. Sustainability 2013, 5, 4614-4636. https://doi.org/10.3390/su5114614

by Sarah Zerika

Drawing upon the transdisciplinary approach as notably outlined by Darbellay (2015), this presentation integrates interested parties’ viewpoints, understandings, and knowledge throughout the research process, highlighting the work of Moody (in press) that emphasises children’s roles as agentic co-researchers. It underscores the ethical imperative of recognising children’s agency and rights in research, in line with the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly articles 12 and 13, which assert children’s rights to be heard and express their opinions freely. James (2007) discusses the importance of authentic, diverse children’s perspectives in research, beyond merely affirming established views. The model of “children’s research advisory group” (‘CRAG’) by Lundy et al. (2011) illustrates how children’s involvement in research processes enhances findings’ validity and applicability, a viewpoint supported by Gillett-Swan (2018) for its quality impact on results.

Proposing an extension of CRAGs within a transdisciplinary framework, this presentation focuses on their design and implementation. Transdisciplinarity offers a broad and cohesive strategy treating participatory methods as a subset of its inclusive philosophy which fosters integration of children’s voices into research and policymaking, ensuring their perspectives are not merely included but are instrumental in shaping outcomes. Building upon this foundation, the research underpinning this discussion is drawn from a doctoral study that employs a case-based and comparative approach across three alternative schools in French-speaking Switzerland. Utilising multi-informant and multi-method strategies to capture the dynamic nature of school climate, as suggested by Wang & Degol (2016), the study includes observations, interviews with teachers, headmasters, and parents, and drawings with children (4 to 12). Emphasis is placed on the children’s perspectives on school climate, as elaborated by Cohen et al. (2009), examining how relationships, safety, pedagogical approaches, and the institutional environment contribute to the overall experience of learning and socialisation in these schools.

An insightful component of this study is the active participation of children aged around 10-11 as co-researchers. They participated in four sessions of approximately one hour each, spread throughout the 2023-2024 school year, across each of the three schools involved. These sessions were dedicated to discussing concepts, methodologies employed, and data analysis. This highlighted the need to consider practical, organisational, and temporal aspects for children as co-researchers. Balancing the power dynamic and ethically navigating the willingness of children and parents to participate were interesting challenges in these classroom and school settings. Reflections from the study underscore the importance of designing activities that accommodate the logistical and temporal realities of children’s lives. Building trust with participants, being prepared to adapt to the unexpected, and continuously reflecting on and adjusting methods to suit the needs and preferences of child participants were important. One of the main advantages was the authentic engagement with students, fostering a reciprocal learning environment and enriching data through their creative contributions. This involvement not only provided valuable data about school climate but also empowered the children as active participants in the research process.

by Giedre Kligyte, Jacqueline Melvold, Susanne Pratt

In the coming decades, global society is anticipated to weather multiple protracted polycrises stemming from a changing climate, disruptive technologies, and social, economic, and political instability. There is a consensus that universities are vital in preparing individuals to navigate these future challenges and contribute their knowledge and capabilities to foster thriving communities. This involves graduates developing transdisciplinary capabilities such as systems thinking, knowledge integration across disciplinary domains and change-making, among others (UNESCO, 2017; Jordan et al., 2021; Kligyte et al., in progress).

Transdisciplinary education is underpinned by an assumption that acquiring transdisciplinary capabilities equips graduates with the skills and tools necessary to achieve positive social and environmental impact. Yet, research into the outcomes and impact of this type of education remains lacking. While it is reasonable to assume that transdisciplinary capabilities may enhance graduates’ capacity to innovate, integrate knowledge across disciplines, and span boundaries across industries and professions, the link between these capabilities and graduates’ ability to achieve social and environmental impact in their professional settings is not well-established (Lewis et al., in progress).

In this presentation, we share preliminary findings from a study on alumni perceptions of the value of transdisciplinary capabilities gained by completing undergraduate transdisciplinary degrees at an Australian university. These alumni, with 1-6 years of workplace experience, were invited to reflect on: (1) the capabilities enabling them to address complex problems and create positive social and environmental impact in their professional lives; and (2) their conceptualisation of this impact. In Phase 1 of the study, graduates were invited to share their perspectives on transdisciplinary capabilities through an alumni survey. Phase 2 delved deeper into the survey themes through focus groups, offering insights into the value of these capabilities in organisational contexts and identifying barriers and enablers to their application.

The survey results (n=121) validated the importance of transdisciplinary capabilities, highlighting graduates' recognition of the significance of relational skills and the capacity to engage with and integrate diverse perspectives for achieving impact in practical contexts. Interestingly, practical and technical expertise were perceived as less significant, with ethical and socially responsible practices not being encouraged in many organisational settings. In the focus groups, participants provided rich accounts of the organisational challenges encountered by graduates seeking to create positive social and environmental impact and drive systems change. A notable disparity was revealed between graduates' aspirations to prioritise societal needs and narrow organisational priorities, often centred on profit and improved efficiency, with less emphasis on broader social responsibility.

These findings can enhance our understanding of the impact of transdisciplinary future-oriented capabilities and inform the development of transdisciplinary university programs. We invite more critical empirical examination and rigorous analysis of the practical impact of transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary education initiatives. Gaining more nuanced insights into the outcomes of these capabilities in fostering broader systems transformation will build the evidence base necessary to support our transdisciplinary education efforts.

by Violaine Forsberg Mussault

Hazardous cultural landscapes are complex sites where natural and cultural agencies are interwoven.

As we see an occurrence of natural hazards due to climate change, a wholesome management of these landscapes depends on comprehensive and integrated adaptation strategies based on site-specific knowledge. This means that natural processes need to be understood in their complexity, along with the cultural practices and communities that are part of the landscape. By doing so, solutions can be developed that are not monofunctional or generic, but that address the specific complexities of a particular site.

It has been widely acknowledged that climate action should depend on collaboration across multiple levels and sectors, and transdisciplinary approaches. Nevertheless, siloed infrastructural approaches to climate risk remain dominant in Norway, especially within the geo-engineering disciplines. In order to properly respond to the pressing challenges presented to us by Norwegian landscapes, I want to highlight the critical role landscape-architects can play in connecting different disciplines. The increasing complexity of hazardous cultural landscapes demands that professionals are equipped with new methods to engage with scientific knowledge from earth sciences. I argue novel ways of describing and acknowledging the intricacies of these landscapes are needed.

This contribution is based on landscape architectural practice and site exploration of a hazardous pastoral valley in Norway and aims to contribute to this issue. My practice-based research experiments with novel cartographic methods and seeks to collate and communicate data from different disciplines to unravel complex landscape agencies.

Based on posthuman theories, the work relies on recent anthropological concepts that can foster new professional landscape-architecture methods and renew natural entities' status as potential actors. I weave scientific datasets (collected through interdisciplinary fieldwork, interviews, and surveys) with local knowledge and my own site experience to draw interpretative cartographies. These various types of knowledge are combined, incorporated and visually translated with the help of various cartographic data in an overlay drawing process. These empathetic cartographies highlight nonhuman agencies' unseen or unknown behaviors, revealing hidden features beneath the landscape's surface.

By visualizing living processes that are absent from our traditional maps and thought patterns, I reveal and address tensions between humans and nonhuman actors. In a transdisciplinary endeavor that combines science, drawing, and speculation on future climate, my hybrid approach provides tools to mediate between communities and their rapidly changing landscapes. The research aims to make explicit the landscape-architect's transdisciplinary weaving skills and their role as a mediator in climate action.

by Julie Kurris, Anne Van Tuijl, Nik Waldram, Ewelina Schraven, Eeke Brussee, Marca Wolfensberger

In contemporary society, the need to address pressing and complex problems, requires a new generation capable of driving change to influence the future. Education serves as an essential building block for knowledge and skills for this new generation (Jensen-Pennington, 2021). Transdisciplinary education - where students, teachers, researchers, and societal partners from different disciplines learn, work, and research together on an equal footing - provides a response to these challenges (Bernstein, 2015; Mauser et al., 2013). It encourages innovation and the generation of new knowledge (Mokiy, 2019), and integrates different disciplines by working towards a shared common goal (Max-Neef, 2005).

This research investigates major organizational and pedagogical challenges for this transdisciplinary education. It focusses specifically on transdisciplinary collaborations in Dutch higher education, incorporating perspectives of teachers, students, policy makers, and researchers. The research also contributes to the development of TRAIL, a new online tool for the development and implementation of higher transdisciplinary education, that builds on the results of the European project STEAM+. Matching the broad scope of TRAIL, this research covers a high variety of themes, as formulated in the research question: What are the main pitfalls and successes in establishing, implementing, and evaluating transdisciplinary higher education for teachers, students, policy makers, and researchers, both in terms of pedagogy and organization, and in collaboration with societal partners? 

In order to identify these pitfalls and successes, two methods were employed. In eight focus groups with teachers, policy makers, researchers and students, the pains and gains of transdisciplinary education were identified through a Value Proposition Canvas (Fransen, 2022). Additionally, ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts and experienced individuals in the Dutch field of transdisciplinary higher education. The focus groups and interviews were transcribed verbatim, coded, and analysed using Atlas-ti. 

Respondents commonly identify the positive effects on students' development aligning with the Inner Development goals (Jordan, et al, 2021), as particular important merits of transdisciplinary education. These gains exist among others of practical experience in addressing complex societal issues and an increased intrinsic motivation for all involved project participants. Organizational pitfalls relating to space, time, and reconciling interests of different parties involved, are identified as possible pains during the development of transdisciplinary education.

The final results can contribute to an understanding of the organizational implementation and design of transdisciplinary collaboration in higher education, about which literature is still limited (Horn et al., 2022). Relating to the lack of pedagogical frameworks for transdisciplinary educations, such as for assessment methods and learning objectives, (Horn et al., 2022), the results of this study seem to offer broad insights which can contribute to the identification of specific follow-up research questions.

Often, transdisciplinary projects start with enthusiastic individuals, often teachers, who are facing the same challenges (Tijsma, Urias, Zweekhorst, 2023). The results contain insights into these challenges, which can be beneficial for different parties which seek to develop or implement transdisciplinary education. By initially incorporating the research findings in the new TRAIL tool, this study can serve as a foundational resource for initiators in transdisciplinary education. 

By Nadin Gaasch, Audrey Podann

How can we ensure that transdisciplinary research is ultimately funded when reviewing transdisciplinary research proposals? We were faced with this question at the end of 2020. For us as dedicated supporters of transdisciplinary research, it was initially quite simple: by bringing experts with transdisciplinary knowledge into the review process in form of a transdisciplinary peer review. However, this alone was not the success factor. In our presentation, we will discuss which factors we consider to be important for selecting projects which demonstrate a convincing transdisciplinary research design.

Although there is a great wealth of research and empirical findings on the evaluation of existing research projects, there are hardly any findings in the literature on transdisciplinary review processes for research proposals. With our contribution we want to draw attention to this gap and share our experiences. Thus, we target the conference stream 1) Enhancing the theoretical foundations of inter- and transdisciplinary with special contribution to: "Harnessing experience and knowledge gained from inter- and transdisciplinary projects and programs" with focus on "Evaluation and assessment".

With our presentation we want to answer the following five questions:

• What are the preconditions for implementing a transdisciplinary review process?

• What ingredients are needed for a transdisciplinary review process?

• What positively surprised us in the overall process - from the conception to the implementation of the review process?

• Where would we make improvements?

• What advice can we give to those who want to set up such a transdisciplinary review process?

Our experience of setting up a call for proposals for transdisciplinary projects and their evaluation is based on two calls for proposals for transdisciplinary research projects of the Berlin University Alliance. The Berlin University Alliance is a cooperation of four Berlin partners – Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin – that receives funding in the line of the German government’s Excellence Strategy. The four partners aim to overcome institutional and disciplinary boundaries in order to create an integrated research environment. In this context, the Berlin University Alliance promotes transdisciplinary research projects, which we actively support as the Alliance's TD-Lab - Laboratory for Transdisciplinary Research.

by Susanne Schuck-Zöller, Juliane El Zohbi, Elke Keup-Thiel and Diana Rechid

Participatory and interactive modes of scientific knowledge production have become promising concepts to tackle the multiple risks of a changing climate. Especially in climate services co-creation approaches are increasingly applied. Climate services are a broad and interdisciplinary field, related to the translation of climate research results for application. The aim is to tailor data and knowledge into customized information and products to support society in their attempts to deal with a changing climate. Co-creative research processes are important to know the needs of practitioners and enhance the applicability of products. Therefore, productive relationships, knowledge integration as well as mutual learning between experts of practice, scientists of all relevant fields and users of climate services have to be advanced.

As evaluation research is increasingly stressing the relation between good co-creation processes and their success and impact (Maag 2018) the improvement of these processes becomes a key issue and was the focus of the project NorQuATrans (Normativity, Objectivity and Quality Assurance of Transdisciplinary Processes). The project aimed for concepts of quality assurance for co-creative research in all its facets.

Using the case study approach, we started in NorQuATrans with identifying the phases and steps of a co-creative product development process within the project ADAPTER (ADAPT tERrestrial systems). After intensive dialogues with key agricultural practitioners ADAPTER delivered innovative simulation-based products to support adaptation to climate change.

The colleagues from the ADAPTER project contributed with their practical experience facilitating co-creation processes to identify the different process steps in different grades of detail. As a result, we identified a complex course of dialogues, research activities, reconcilement processes and many iteration loops to re-adjust the development of climate service products (Schuck-Zöller et al. 2022). From this empiric activity we gained a sequence of process steps and activities. These process steps and sub-processes, originating from ADAPTER, were compared to descriptions in literature (i.e. Maag et al. 2018, Jahn et al. 2015). In this way we added a theoretical background to the empiric results and generalized them.

The aims of the cooperation between NorQuATrans and ADAPTER were threefold:

• Improving the co-creation processes in the development of climate service products,

• creating a sequence that could be transferable to other thematic fields of transdisciplinary research, and

• developing the basis for a kind of manual “How to organize co-creative product development processes successfully”.

In our contribution we want to present our methodology as well as the results. Challenges for researchers in adapting their routines in conducting research to expectations and needs of practitioners shall be discussed.

References

• Jahn, Thomas, Keil, Florian (2015). An actor-specific guideline for quality assurance in transdisciplinary research. Futures 65, p. 195-208

• Maag, Simon, Alexander, Timothy J., Kase, Robert, Hoffmann, Sabine (2018). Indicators for measuring the contributions of individual knowledge brokers. Environmental Science & Policy 89, p. 1-9

• Schuck-Zöller, S.; Bathiany, S.; Dressel, M.; El Zohbi, J.; Keup-Thiel, E.; Rechid, D.; Suhari, M. (2022): Process indicators in transdisciplinary research and co-creation. A formative evaluation scheme for climate services. In: fteval Journal for Research and Technology Policy Evaluation, 53, p. 43-56. doi: 10.22163/fteval.2022.541

• Suhari, M.; Dressel, M.; Schuck-Zöller, S. (2022): Challenges and best-practices of co-creation: A qualitative interview study in the field of climate services. In: Climate Services, 25. doi: org/10.1016/j.cliser.2021.100282

by Alex Baumber, Rebecca Cross, Peter Ampt

Since the early 1990s, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) has been applied to diverse projects across contexts that include development, conservation and agriculture. PRA has many inherent characteristics of a transdisciplinary method, including the way it treats rural people as co-producers of knowledge and the opportunities it offers for researchers and rural community members to practice reflexivity. However, PRA can be undertaken within disciplinary silos where expertise from diverse disciplinary backgrounds is not included. It has also attracted criticism for preferencing some local perspectives over others and lacking the rigour found in other qualitative and quantitative approaches to social research.

In this paper, we reflect on more than 15 years of applying PRA in collaborative teams across multiple rural research projects. The insights generated through this process offer guidance to researchers seeking to make their own approaches to PRA more transdisciplinary and have been used to refine how we educate emerging researchers at our universities. Key factors include the deliberate selection of a diverse researcher team, inclusive approaches to ensure that marginalised voices are heard, and carefully-designed reflexive processes to unpack assumptions, values and worldviews informed by different disciplinary backgrounds and life experiences.

Aside from offering practical advice to researchers seeking to apply PRA, we also identify ways in which the methods and strategies that are typically employed in PRA may provide value for transdisciplinary research in other contexts. These include the pairing of outside researchers with local stakeholders when conducting interviews, workshop formats that enable co-reflexivity between researchers and community members, and opportunities for sensemaking in the ‘third spaces’ created by travel. While some of these approaches have emerged from the unique characteristics of rural environments, they can be applied or adapted to transdisciplinary research in urban and other contexts. Accordingly, we have begun to consider how they can be used to educate emerging researchers in transdisciplinary practice at our institutions

by Pfungwa Michelle Nyamukachi

The presentation will present findings of a survey and structured interviews whose main objectives were to, firstly definitional, to understand understand what researchers in Africa define and consider as transdisciplinary research. Secondly, gain deeper insights into the perceptions of transdisciplinary research as a research approach, the state of readiness of researchers in Africa to conduct transdisciplinary research. Thirdly, to guage the extent of transdisciplinary research that is already taking place and challenges. Fourthly, draw insights on how transdisciplinary research could be assessed and evaluated and what if at all is different about assessing TD research from traditional disciplinary research. Lastly, determine training and other support needs of researchers with regards to transdisciplinary research.