March 2022 – Integration and Implementation Insights

Place-based methodologies in transdisciplinary research

September 20, 2022March 29, 2022

By Alexandra Crosby and Ilaria Vanni

authors_alexandra-crosby_ilaria-vanni_1 — 1. Alexandra Crosby (biography)
2. Ilaria Vanni (biography)

How can place-based methodologies be integrated into transdisciplinary research?

Locating research in a real physical place is vital in building culture and making important insights more visible to diverse audiences. But for many researchers and community members, place is more than location. People have important attachments to place that change and influence the outcomes of transdisciplinary research, which is one reason to integrate some place-based methodologies into your projects. Our research studio ‘Mapping Edges’, for example, employs place-based methodologies to identify, analyse and amplify civic ecologies and to propose more sustainable ways to design and live in cities.

Place-based research engages with multiple methodological debates, reflecting humanities and social sciences’ increasing interest in space and place.

Drawing lines between researcher and advocate?

November 20, 2024March 22, 2022

By Alison Ritter

Is it possible to be both a researcher and an advocate? Indeed, is there even a duty to be both researcher and advocate?

“Advocacy” has been seen by some in the academy as a dirty word. Oliver and Cairney (2019) distinguish between an ‘honest broker’ and an ‘issue advocate’, suggesting that advocacy crosses some line. Simon Chapman, who has championed public health advocacy, has noted that some people see it as a “fraught, politicised activity” (Chapman 2015), and “disparaged” (Haynes et al., 2011). In the comments on Dorothy Broom’s blog post Researcher activism: A voice of experience one “persistent idea” is that academic work is somehow neutral while advocacy work is political. Smith and Stewart (2017) nicely reflect the tensions when they contrast it as either a “disciplinary duty” or “political propaganda”.

These contrasting views on advocacy seem to rest on what is being defined as “advocacy”. For those who feel advocacy has a central role to play in effective research translation, the work (or key task) is to focus on the evidence.

Integrating context, formats and effects in transdisciplinary research

December 4, 2024March 15, 2022

By tdAcademy 2021 GAIA paper authors

authors_td-academy-2021_gaia-paper — Author biographies

What are the key aspects of transdisciplinary research and how can they be integrated effectively?

Four key aspects of transdisciplinary research are:

context dependencies
innovative formats
societal effects
scientific effects.

These are illustrated in the figure below, along with a summary of an ‘ideal’ transdisciplinary research process.

1. Context dependencies

Context dependencies are the factors that influence both the research design and the interpretation of results and include: who is involved (the actors), the social, cultural, political and other conditions, and the research setting (for example is it outside the lead researchers’ home country).

A collaborative vision and pathways for transforming academia

January 29, 2025March 8, 2022

By The Care Operative and “Transforming Academia” workshop participants at 2021 International Transdisciplinarity Conference

authors_care-group_workshop-participants_transforming-academia — Author biographies

What do we want academia to be like in 2050? Is academia on the right track? What will it take to agree on and realize a joint vision that can steer life in science towards a more sustainable and agreeable place to work, to learn, to share and to appreciate knowledge?

The issues raised here are based on a workshop with more than 40 participants at the International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2021. The discussion was initiated and hosted by the Careoperative, a leadership collective motivated to explore, embody and pollinate transformational sustainability and transdisciplinary research.

Can cultural hegemony explain resistance to transdisciplinarity?

January 29, 2025March 1, 2022

By Livia Fritz, Ulli Vilsmaier and Dena Fam

author_livia-fritz_ulli-vilsmaier_dena-fam — 1. Livia Fritz (biography)
2. Ulli Vilsmaier (biography)
2. Dena Fam (biography)

What are the reasons for resistance to transdisciplinary research and education? And what insights can Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of the Italian Communist party in the early 20^th Century, offer?

We argue that one of the main reasons for resistance is that transdisciplinarity subverts well-established and often unquestioned structures, practices and values in academia. In particular, transdisciplinarity challenges persistent organizational structures, mechanisms of knowledge production and evaluation criteria based on disciplinary models of research and higher education.