Latest contribution
Navigating inter- and transdisciplinary PhD supervision: Practical questions for students and supervisors
By Erika Angarita, Anna Hajdu, Yanyan Huang, BinBin Pearce, Guadalupe Peres-Cajías, Hussein Zeidan and Yuanyuan Zhu.
How can a student and their supervisors develop a shared map for a PhD project when they come from different disciplinary traditions, hold different assumptions about knowledge and quality, and operate within institutional systems that are still largely structured around single disciplines? How can they navigate what may feel obvious to one and may be invisible to another?
We developed a structured checklist of questions designed to support supervision conversations and reduce tensions resulting from unspoken assumptions. The checklist aims to be a guide for thoughtful, ongoing reflection between supervisors and doctoral students. These questions cover five areas where misunderstandings commonly arise:
Recent contributions
A framework for considering context in evaluation of transdisciplinary research projects
By Julia Schegg, Rea Pärli, Manuel Fischer and Eva Lieberherr.
2. Rea Pärli (biography)
3. Manuel Fischer (biography)
4. Eva Lieberherr (biography)
How do contextual factors influence the effects of transdisciplinary research projects? How can assessment of transdisciplinary research move from only considering outcome effectiveness to understanding the reasons behind how and why something works?
Our framework considers both context and the effects of transdisciplinary research projects, as summarised in the figure below. Each aspect of the framework is described in more detail.
Context
We based the conceptualization of context for any given problem on three established frameworks from policy studies, emphasising system conditions, public action resources and events.
Developing a conceptual framework to support communication, collaboration and integration
By Hanna Salomon, Jialin Zhang and Sabine Hoffmann.
2. Jialin Zhang (biography)
3. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)
How can the process of developing a conceptual framework in an inter- and transdisciplinary research project itself create valuable space for reflection, alignment, and learning?
What we have found when developing a project-specific conceptual framework is that the process is as important, if not more important, for the research team than the emerging conceptual framework itself. The process provides space and time to discuss and deep-dive into concepts and terms used within the research team leading to much needed discussions and insights for the individual researchers.
The Cultiv8 tool Part 2: Actionable insights for navigating power
By Sobia Khan and Julia E. Moore.
2. Julia E Moore (biography)
How can we move beyond considering power as the source of implementation challenges and bottlenecks, and instead focus on how we can change or shift the nature of power? How might you experience implementation differently if you knew how to unpack power dynamics and had strategies to navigate power in your implementation practice or research?
This i2Insights contribution is a companion to our previous post on cultivating trust. Trust and power go hand in hand and can’t be dealt with in silos – when considering trust, you also need to consider power and vice versa. The framework presented here helps to understand the dimensions of power and actionable steps for navigating each of these dimensions. Here we describe a second aspect of the Cultiv8 tool to unpack power dynamics.
The Cultiv8 tool Part 1: Actionable insights for cultivating trust
By Julia E. Moore and Sobia Khan.
2. Sobia Khan (biography)
What are some useful ways of thinking about trust when developing plans to implement your research or strengthen your team? More importantly, what are some practical ways to build trust both as an individual and as an organisation?
Indeed, when asked about some of the most challenging parts of implementing changes and taking part in research collaborations, people often talk about trust. Trust is essential for equity and for working with people in effective ways, but so few of us are trained in how to build trust.
This i2Insights contribution provides a practical approach to thinking about trust, along with actionable steps to cultivate trust to help you achieve your goals, whether you are working with others to implement evidence or looking to strengthen your team dynamics.
Highlighted contributions
Keyword quiz: an icebreaker method for interdisciplinary teams
By Sebastian Rogga and Anton Parisi
2. Anton Parisi (biography)
How can members of interdisciplinary teams quickly gain a better understanding of each other’s thematic preferences and skills in a way that is also engaging and fun?
We have developed a “keyword quiz” icebreaker method to facilitate exchange between members of interdisciplinary teams, especially between people who are not complete strangers to each other but are collaborating in a project context for the first time.
In brief, the idea is to communicate each member’s scientific profile based on keywords from publications that the team members have published and that they have selected based on specific categories.
The keywords of a publication are presented visually to the whole group and the team members then guess, in the form of a quiz, which team member published the associated publication.
Seven methods for mapping systems
By Pete Barbrook-Johnson and Alexandra S. Penn
2. Alexandra S. Penn (biography)
What are some effective approaches for developing causal maps of systems in participatory ways? How do different approaches relate to each other and what are the ways in which systems maps can be useful?
Here we focus on seven system mapping methods, described briefly in alphabetical order.
1. Bayesian Belief Networks: a network of variables representing their conditional dependencies (ie., the likelihood of the variable taking different states depending on the states of the variables that influence them). The networks follow a strict acyclic structure (ie., no feedbacks), and nodes tend to be restricted to maximum two incoming arrows. These maps are analysed using the conditional probabilities to compute the potential impact of changes to certain variables, or the influence of certain variables given an observed outcome.
Theory of change in inter- and transdisciplinary research
By Josefa Kny, Sabine Hoffmann, Emilia Nagy and Martina Schäfer
2. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)
3. Emilia Nagy (biography)
4. Martina Schäfer (biography)
What are key functions of theory of change? For what purposes can we use theory of change in inter- and transdisciplinary research?
A theory of change maps the assumed relationships between activities and short-, medium- and long-term changes of an intervention, program or project. It makes assumptions about why and how such changes occur transparent. Theory of change approaches have their origins in theory-based evaluation and Paulo Freire’s theory of societal change (Freire, 1970) and have predominantly been used in development research and practice since the late 1990s.
In general, theory of change can be understood as a process and a product, as described by Heléne Clarke in her i2Insights contribution Theory of Change in a nutshell.
Storytelling and systems change
An i2Insights story based on one originally told by Thea Snow, David Murikumthara, Teya Dusseldorp, Rachel Fyfe, Lila Wolff and Jane McCracken
How is storytelling important in driving systems change? What does good storytelling look like? What makes it hard to tell stories about systems change work? We address these three questions.
But first, what do we mean by systems change? We use the definition developed by New Philanthropy Capital (Abercrombie et al. 2015): “Systems change aims to bring about lasting change by altering underlying structures and supporting mechanisms which make the system operate in a particular way. These can include policies, routines, relationships, resources, power structures and values.”