By Annisa Triyanti, Barbara van Paassen, Corinne Lamain, Jessica Duncan, Jillian Student, Jonas Collen Ladeia Torrens and Nina de Roo
What principles need to be upheld to fund and support fair, inclusive, and equitable transdisciplinary collaborations? What competences and attitudes are required for transdisciplinary collaborations to foster epistemic justice? And what do mushrooms have to do with this?!
It is widely acknowledged that to address complex societal problems and harness plural ways of knowing, a wider range of actors, perspectives and types of knowledge are needed than is traditionally the case in other forms of knowledge creation. Transdisciplinary collaborations are different from traditional forms of science in:
- 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.
The latter merits particular attention, to avoid falling prey to epistemic injustice, by which we mean excluding relevant voices, or not including them in meaningful ways. This manifests as excluding people marginalized by dominant forces from 1) being heard and understood by others in interpersonal communications and 2) contributing to broader and deeper social understandings of the focal question or problem.
The mushroom life cycle as an analogy for transdisciplinary collaborations
We propose to speak of ‘transdisciplinary collaborations’ rather than ‘transdisciplinary research’ so as to de-centre the academic context. A nurturing metaphor, then, for thinking about transdisciplinary collaborations is the mushroom life cycle – shown in the figure below. This metaphor foregrounds the careful shaping of relationships, which paves the way for more fair, inclusive, and equitable collaborations.
The encounters at the beginning of a transdisciplinary collaboration (TD encounters in the figure) can be likened to the release of spores and the germination phase of the mushroom:
- There is considerable serendipity and uncertainty in how encounters start and develop. It is unclear from the onset if or how a full collaboration will emerge from those encounters.
- Transdisciplinary encounters depend on finding appropriate settings that are favorable for supporting relationships between different parties.
Transdisciplinary engagements are analogous to the expansion of the mycelium and formation of the primordium:
- Much of the work on transdisciplinarity happens ‘underground’, ie., before a formal project. For instance, finding the right partners, developing trust, building relationships between academics and societal actors, and developing familiarity with other perspectives.
Transdisciplinary collaborations are like the development of the fruiting body:
- Visible transdisciplinary collaborations often emerge late in this lifecycle, are relatively short-lived, and are dependent on bringing to fruition prior encounters and engagements.
Re-entering the cycle and the formation and release of new spores:
- An important outcome of transdisciplinary collaborations is the formation of new encounters that would not happen otherwise.
- Many of the impacts of transdisciplinary collaborations can be relatively hard to trace or specify in the early stages. Building those relationships requires time and space before more traditional impact indicators can be used to measure advancement.
Finally, the environment is important for both mushrooms and transdisciplinary collaborations:
- All phases draw from and build the richness of the environments in which they emerge. Without a supportive environment, they are unlikely to flourish. Acting to create a supportive environment is crucial.
Four principles that foster meaningful transdisciplinary collaborations
Understanding transdisciplinary collaborations along the metaphor of the mushroom life cycle offers opportunity for increasing their fairness, inclusivity and equity. This will nonetheless require specific attention throughout each stage of the life cycle. For this, we offer four principles:
- Address (context-specific) societally relevant issues while maintaining scientific relevance
The tension between the shared goals and (possibly) distinct motivations of researchers and societal partners involved needs to be recognised in order to promote transdisciplinary collaborations. Alternatively, transdisciplinary collaborations can be considered a journey of finding mutual interest and relevance for both society and science, which might not be clear upfront.
- Embrace complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty
The wicked problems that transdisciplinary collaborations may address are characterised by unpredictable and non-linear dynamics and are often surrounded by conflicting knowledge claims and value frameworks. This requires a deliberate process of embracing dependencies and interconnectedness, disagreements about the validity of knowledge claims, as well as the high levels of uncertainty of the available knowledge for future events.
- Value and harness plural ways of knowing via co-creating and co-learning
Transdisciplinary collaborations demand active engagement with different ways of knowing, values, and interests. As a result of the complexity and active engagement of different participants, no one way of doing or a universal optimal solution is self-evident. Co-creation, co-design, co-production, and co-learning evoke the direct involvement of societal actors to achieve integrative responses to societal challenges.
- Involve diverse relevant actors in inclusive, fair, and equitable ways
We speak of relevant actors as those who are affected and/or have particular knowledge (whether academic or lived experience or other) on the issues being researched or addressed. Ideally, this group would include those “most affected and least heard” and from a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives.
These four principles are interconnected and not mutually exclusive. There may be some overlaps, especially in terms of the implications in practice.
Competences and attitudes
Training for transdisciplinary collaborations that provides alignment with these principles requires competences and attitudes that are not yet commonplace in academia, as well as unlearning some skills and attitudes that are widespread.
Training should emphasise attitudes that harness fair and just collaboration, eg., humility, tolerance of difference, empathy, awareness of power, openness and curiosity. This requires unlearning of attitudes that centralize the individual academic, that aim to showcase the ‘superior knowledge’ from a specific field or that is about pushing a specific perspective. To achieve this, strengthening key competences is vital, such as listening, reflecting, perspective-taking, integration of different types of knowledge, collaboration (including addressing barriers to participation), communication across sectors, adaptability, managing expectations and interests, risk assessment, and ‘managing’ conflicts.
For example, training requires exercises on positionality, power balance reflection and stakeholder mapping, and may be enhanced by embodied and creative approaches, as described in an earlier i2Insights contribution by two of us (Corinne Lamain and Jillian Student) on embodied and creative practices for creating connection in the context of conferences.
Reader reflections invited
What challenges have you experienced in trying to establish fair and just transdisciplinary collaborations? How do you take these principles into action in your practices? How do you reflect on, and train, skills and attitudes required for your transdisciplinary collaborations?
To find out more:
van Paassen, B., de Roo, N., Student, J., Torrens, J. and Triyanti, A. (2023). Scoping transdisciplinary collaborations: A principled approach to meaningfully fund and support unusual transdisciplinary encounters, engagements, and collaborations. Centre for Unusual Collaborations: Utrecht, Netherlands. (Online – open access): https://drive.google.com/file/d/14AFtnnOznj1aTNhu_egqB-1CU6zkQNAB/view (PDF 1.8MB)
The report cites Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press: Oxford, United Kingdom, which inspired our thinking.
Note: The authors are listed in alphabetical order by first name.
Annisa Triyanti PhD is Assistant Professor specializing in disaster and climate risk governance for sustainability at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She applies and explores transdisciplinarity in research and education and actively advocates for co-learning with diverse societal actors across various educational programs.
Barbara van Paassen MSc is an independent consultant and facilitator supporting organisations working for social, economic and environmental justice with research, strategy and outreach. She is passionate about bridging different worlds and co-creating inclusive spaces of learning, reflection, visioning and strategy development. She is also the host and creator of the People vs Inequality Podcast and a Senior Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the London School of Economics.
Corinne Lamain MSc is Director, Centre for Unusual Collaborations, the Netherlands. The Centre for Unusual Collaborations is part of an alliance between Technical University Eindhoven, Wageningen University and Research, Utrecht University and University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands. She works on facilitating knowledge production that contributes to environmental justice, especially through transdisciplinary research. She is also a PhD candidate working on the militarization of climate action at the International Institute for Social Studies located in The Hague, the Netherlands.
Jessica Duncan PhD is Associate Professor in the Politics of Food Systems Transformation at the Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. She is a founding member of the Centre for Unusual Collaborations. Her research pioneers new ways of understanding and imagining food governance processes to support just and sustainable transformations.
Jillian Student PhD is a postdoctoral researcher on inter- and transdisciplinarity at Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research, Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands. Her research integrates different scientific disciplines, forms of knowledge and approaches to better understand emerging environmental changes that affect and are affected by human decision-making.
Jonas Torrens PhD is Assistant Professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, focusing on urban, policy and societal experimentation with sustainability and the policies that coordinate experimentation. He has co-coordinated the Transdisciplinary Field Guide, and is involved in teaching the Centre for Unusual Collaborations’ SPARK training on interdisciplinary competencies.
Nina de Roo PhD is a researcher on responsible transitions at Wageningen Economic Research (WUR), the Netherlands. Her research is centered around questions of inclusion/exclusion, collaboration, and knowledge politics in the domain of transitions in agriculture and food systems.
Thank you Annisa, Barbara, Corinne, Jessica, Jillian, Jonas, and Nina. Your mushroom life cycle analogy is a good one, but recent experiences have left me thinking that the mentions in your article and report of the importance of a supportive environment have greatly under-emphasized a critical element. This is the substrate needed for mycelium establishment and growth, and it equates to research institution administrations. The substrate – an administration – provides the nutrients and energy needed for mushrooms to flourish, so it needs to be healthy, but my experiences show that research institution administrations can be anything but healthy.
In a recent engagement, the researchers themselves have been active leaders in not only practicing the principles you put forward, but also advocating for their adoption. However, their research institution administration has been found to be a very long way from being able to “Involve diverse relevant actors in inclusive, fair, and equitable ways.” One example of this is being made to feel like a lesser being because life circumstances meant that, after many years of waiting, I went from college certificate to master’s degree without doing an undergraduate degree. Another example is having my qualifications subjected to what amounts to forensic analysis, when I also have a wealth of “particular knowledge [including lived experience] on the issues being researched or addressed” that is considered to have no value by the institution’s administrative processes.
It’s been a dreadful experience, and has left me thinking that until research institutions can turn their own administrations into healthy substrates, they really don’t yet have the credibility and therefore social license to be advocating publicly for epistemic justice.
Hello Annisa, Barbara, Corinne, Jessica, Jillian, Jonas and Nina.
You have clearly managed in this blog to offer your thoughts on a way of arranging transdisciplinary explorations, based on your extensive experience and reflection.
I agree with Bruce Mckenzie that your account of transdisciplinary collaboration is a timely contribution to transdisciplinary explorations, which are different from traditional forms of science. Perhaps indeed, as you suggest, instead of using the word research, which might be associated with traditional ways of practising science, we should speak of transdisciplinary collaboration. As you put it: “We propose to speak of ‘transdisciplinary collaborations’ rather than ‘transdisciplinary research’ so as to de-centre the academic context”. Indeed this terminology does help to decentre the so-called expertise situated in academia. Or perhaps we should recognise that the meaning of science and research can and should include collectively-generated knowing endeavors, where all those concerned and affected by the exploration (including professional and lay researchers) engage in co-inquiry by forming ever-increasing reciprocal relationships. Your mushroom metaphor aptly expresses what you have in mind and what you have experienced in your practising of collaborative inquiry. As you indicate, the metaphor of the mushroom life cycle offers opportunity for increasing their fairness, inclusivity and equity.
But I am thinking that research (and science) itself should in any case by practiced this way. This is what is suggested by those forwarding what is called an Indigenous research paradigm – such as, for example, Bagele Chilisa in her various works (and many other Indigenous scholars hailing from different parts of the world who explicate what this paradigm implies in terms of the practice of research with a decolonising agenda). This paradigm questions dominant notions of what science means, and they offer an alternative. Chilisa’s article entitled “Decolonising transdisciplinary research approaches: an African perspective for enhancing knowledge integration in sustainability science”, was published in the journal Sustainability Science in 2017. It offers methodologies (based on African worldviews and epistemologies) which, as she remarks, “question academic and methodological imperialism, and bring to the centre problem and solution-driven research agendas”. In other words, she suggests that a transdisciplinary approach decentres knowledge located in academia and “embraces all knowledge systems, legitimises local knowledge holders, practitioners, and communities as scholars and authors of what they know and how it can be known”. This, she argues, is an alternative way of conducting research, that as you may suggest, increases fairness, inclusivity and equity.
But Chilisa does not hereby forego the term research (and indeed even the term science). She does not want Indigenous ways of knowing to be considered unscientific, but rather a different way of practising science. Other Indigenous scholars (e.g. Native American Gregory Cajete) also make this point. Their argument is that Indigenous sages and scholars have always tied knowing to collaborative inquiry in the quest to find solutions to issues of concern. As you say, specific competencies are needed in order to engender transdisciplinary collaborations. But perhaps we can also learn from how Indigenous scholars have developed these competencies, while traditional (dominant) processes of learning in academia do not nurture them! Therefore academia needs to be decolonised as part of the process of enskilling people in these competencies.
I have found when working with indigenous colleagues in facilitating research that they are competent in organising relationally-directed research. This seems to come naturally to them because they (the ones with whom I have worked) have been steeped in relational knowing-and-being from their heritage. But yes, practising collaborative transdisciplinary research (I suggest we can continue to use this term!) does require a skill set that thus far does not feature in most academic institutions. As you say, the competences and attitudes are not “commonplace in academia”. Meanwhile, I found your piece very interesting reading with your advice on how to “foster meaningful transdisciplinary collaborations”. Thanks for this contribution!
Dear Norma,
Thanks so much for your thoughtful response: indeed, there are many further questions to explore. Indeed the principles that are foregrounded here should be guiding in all academic efforts, but we see that in the current surge of funding and practice of transdisciplinary they need to be explicitly foregrounded. Also because the Centre for Unusual Collaborations is a funding body as well and we wish to uphold our values and principles across our own funding and support. Your contributions here are much appreciated and it is a delight to be able to have this exchange of thought with you and others via this platform and elsewhere. Many thanks!
Hello Corinne. Yes, I agree, this platform is a very good one for exchange of thoughts and practices. The Centre for Unusual Collaborations sounds like an interesting initiative! Many thanks, Norma
This blog, and the Report that seems to have initiated it, are timely contributions to transdisciplinary collaborations, which so often are characterised by contests between competing knowledge and methods. Most collaborators would agree with the desirability of the four stated principles, but finding a way to embed them in processes of collaboration is proving very difficult. I have found that the words from Principle 2 “a deliberate process of embracing dependencies and interconnectedness” is a good starting point that creates a pathway into incorporating the other Principles. Treating the collaboration ‘as if it is a system’ and then with the collaborators as nodes explore the systems property of coherence. The exploration is facilitated by each node asking of each of the other nodes “what do you need from me to enhance your contribution to the project?” The ensuring conversations can lead the collaborators to build a process plan and framework of management and evaluation.
Thanks Bruce, that is very insigtful, and is very much in the spirit of what we propose.
Very appropriate metaphor and useful summary, thanks! One wonders what other disciplinary and research institutions join the narrative as mutualistic trees benefiting from the soil, not to mention decomposing corpses!
Hi Stefan,
Indeed, that was part of the inspiration. It is striking how disciplines, without any inter or transdisciplinary, can become somewhat ‘monocultural’ as tree plantations without a rich substrate. “Entangled life” and all be the beautiful observations about the interconnectedness of most environments (through fungi) was also an inspiration.