Community news

Place, integration and stakeholder engagement feature in recent stand-out contributions to i2Insights blog and repository. James Turner highlights eleven key principles associated with successful place-based community-led projects; Colleen Cuddy presents key facilitators of successful integration; and Emma Ligtermoet and colleagues show how context is used to centre exploration of interconnected elements of positionality, purpose, power and process in stakeholder engagement.

Die European Citizen Science Association fordert die dezidierte Förderung und Verankerung von Citizen Science im nächsten Forschungsrahmenprogramm der Europäischen Kommission. Das Positionspapier wurde mit Praktiker:innen und dem Projekt European Citizen Science erarbeitet kann digital unterzeichnet werden.

Von der Idee zum Konzept - unterstützt das Planungstemplate von mit:forschen! mit Leitfragen, Tipps und Literaturhinweisen bei der Planung eines Citizen-Science-Projekts. Das Tool hebt wichtige Themenfelder hervor, die bereits vor Projektstart zu berücksichtigen sind. Das Planungstemplate kann als PDF zum Ausdrucken oder als Miro-Vorlage genutzt werden.

Why a new name?
Since the foundation of the KFPE in 1994 debates on research and development cooperation have evolved. Successful collaborations of our member organizations with partners around the world have contributed to develop new perspectives on complex global interconnections. The new name reflects new understandings.

With the new name, we also have a new website: globalresearch.ch and a new e-mail: globalresearch@scnat.ch

The Swiss Social Sciences & Humanities Energy Research Group – sign up on our website!

You can always become active, send emails to the whole group, and suggest workshops, conferences, and other community formats for exchange on energy topics. Currently, we also are very interested in new members from the Arts, as well as from the civil society.

Please feel also free to join the Swiss Social Sciences & Humanities Energy Research Group on Linkedin.

By Collen Cuddy

What kinds of integration are required in interdisciplinary teams to truly synthesize diverse knowledge and perspectives, creating meaningful outcomes? What are the key facilitators of successful integration?

Mit einer feierlichen Auftaktveranstaltung ist das „Transformationslabor Stadt und Universität Würzburg“ gestartet. Ziel ist es, gemeinsam Lösungen für gesellschaftliche Transformationsprozesse zu entwickeln und zu erproben.

While many scientific institutions and public administrations strive to anticipate technological developments and their implications, TA-SWISS's scope is broader in that it analyses technological trends from a wide-ranging, macrosocial. At the express request of the Swiss parliament, it assesses technological trends from a wide-ranging, macrosocial perspective, outlining options for action.

In its annual report the Foundation provides insight into the various mechanisms put in place to ensure the relevance, breadth and analytical depth and quality of its interdisciplinary reports. 2024 can be seen as a prime example of this, with the foundation publishing four significant studies while simultaneously working on or initiating five additional projects.

The April-June 2025 i2S News provides the latest developments in the Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) theoretical framework covering research approaches, imperfection, and trust. Further, 19 tools were added to two repositories covering change, decision making, diversity, integration, research implementation, stakeholder engagement, systems and teamwork. In addition, there are two new videos featuring a South–North dialogue and pioneering teaching efforts, as well as two new blog posts discussing artificial intelligence

AI, Africa and advice on planning stakeholder workshops feature in recent stand-out contributions to i2Insights blog and repository. Faye Miller highlights capacities essential for transdisciplinarians to make the most of AI; Basirat Oyalowo lays out the critical role for TD in in achieving higher education’s third mission in Africa and PhD student, Maxine Fromm, provides practical lessons for planning transdisciplinary stakeholder workshops.

By Adrian Wolfberg.

How can solving today’s most complex challenges reckon with four fundamentally different ways of knowing? How can the collision of their distinct epistemic strengths and blind spots be harnessed for innovation in threat assessment and decision-making on complex problems?

Utrecht University has adopted a comprehensive approach to broadening and deepening its interdisciplinary teaching & learning portfolio on all levels of education (bachelor’s, master’s, PhD and continuing education). The course combines theory and experiments in the governance of interdisciplinary higher education (IHE) with educational development and teacher professionalization for IHE and with research of IHE.

Registration deadline: 20 June 2025

Current challenges such as the transformation towards sustainable ways of living require a closer collaboration of science with society and politics. How scientists can support such societal processes most effectively depends on the situation and the topic. A new guide for reflecting on possible roles in sustainability transformations as well as general principles derived from it help to analyse the different roles of re­sear­chers in society. These are available online on a new website.

The video of the great webinar “Measuring What Matters in Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Developing and Testing the Perspective Integration Capability (PIC) Scale” by Maritza Salazar Campo is now on the Integration and Implementation Sciences Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/i2sTalks/.

This webinar is the seventh in the series Intentional Integration: How do we know if it’s working?

It’s in a playlist called “Intereach webinar series.” The direct url is: https://youtu.be/GGl5Pt-F0Cs 

Colleagues from the Netherlands are undertaking an explorative survey into inter- and transdisciplinary PhDs as part of the project: Five-Legged Sheep? Selecting, Training, Supervising and Rewarding Inter- and Transdisciplinary Researchers. They seek input from supervisors of inter- and transdisciplinary PhD projects through a survey. The survey covers 6 themes: your academic profile, experience with PhD supervision, motivations for PhD supervision, selection and hiring of inter- and transdisciplinary PhD candidates, team supervision, and competencies for inter- and transdisciplinary PhD supervision. Completing it is found to take approximately 20 minutes. The team is very grateful if you take the time to share your experiences!

For team dynamics to work effectively, what is the range of contributions that needs to be covered by different team members? How can diversity in skills relevant to team functioning be effectively recognised and harnessed? Here the focus is not on the actual task the team is trying to accomplish, but rather the dynamics of working together and the different contributions or roles required for effective team functioning.