By Hanna Salomon, Benjamin Hofmann and Sabine Hoffmann.
2. Benjamin Hofmann (biography)
3. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)
What roles do researchers typically play in inter- and transdisciplinary projects? How can they be made transparent in order to reflect on them?
Inter- and transdisciplinary projects typically require different roles and the researchers involved may play one or more of them. There is a plethora of literature describing various ideal-typical roles and we used the literature on researchers’ roles in sustainability science to develop a reflection tool on researcher roles in inter- and transdisciplinary projects.
A Role Reflection Tool
The reflection tool consists of a role survey for individual researchers, a spider web graph for immediate role visualization on the individual and project team level, and a set of questions for individual and project team reflections. All these elements can be implemented in a workshop setting of around one to one and a half hours.
The role survey operationalizes six roles in the form of three typical tasks per role, shown in the table below. A researcher filling out the survey decides for each task whether she/he performs this task in the context of the specific inter- and transdisciplinary project (assigning it a score of 1 if performed, and 0 if not).
The total score for each role can therefore range from 0 to 3. Once aggregated, the scores for all six roles are transferred into a spider web graph to obtain the individual role profile of the researcher.
The individual role profiles can be laid on top of each other in a project-level spider web graph to see which roles are most strongly present within the project team and which ones are less represented. We provide an example in the figure below which compares senior and junior researchers in two projects related to sustainable agriculture (called TRAPEGO) and ecosystem management (called TREBRIDGE).
A further set of questions for individuals and project teams is provided to spark reflection, notably about opportunities and challenges of different role combinations, potential coping strategies on the individual level and the alignment of roles performed by the team with the project goals. At the individual level, the questions are:
- What opportunities do you experience with respect to your roles (eg., in terms of synergies, resources, expectations)?
- What challenges do you face with respect to your roles (eg., in terms of tensions between specific roles, resources, expectations)?
- What coping strategies have you developed to seize these opportunities or address these challenges?
At the project level, the questions are:
- To what extent does the combination of roles in your team fit the project goals?
- What opportunities and challenges does the combination of roles in the project entail, and what coping strategies do you see?
We have observed that the role reflection tool:
- Sparked broader discussions about role distribution within projects.
- Facilitated conscious decisions about researchers’ roles, which supports collaboration within projects.
- Is versatile, as it can be adapted to the unique circumstances of an inter- and transdisciplinary research project, for example, by adding, excluding, or exchanging certain roles or by adapting the reflection questions.
Concluding questions
What has been your experience with different roles of researchers in inter- and transdisciplinary research projects? Do you see value in using the role reflection tool in your setting? How could it be adapted to include stakeholders from outside of academia?
To find out more:
Hofmann, B., Salomon, H. and Hoffmann, S. (2025). Roles of researchers in inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research: A reflection tool. Sustainability Science. (Online – open access) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01619-x
An example workshop outline is available in the supplementary material of the publication (at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-024-01619-x#Sec14).
Much of the text in this i2Insights contribution was taken verbatim from the paper and the paper also provides detailed references.
Biography: Hanna Salomon is a doctoral candidate at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, in Duebendorf and ETH Zurich, both in Switzerland. Her research interests include researchers’ roles and interdisciplinary integration in inter- and transdisciplinary research projects over time.
Biography: Benjamin Hofmann PhD is a scientist in environmental social sciences at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, in Duebendorf, Switzerland. He conducts and leads inter- and transdisciplinary research on evidence use for sustainable policy and practice and on broader science-society relations in the context of environmental change.
Biography: Sabine Hoffmann PhD is group leader of inter- and transdisciplinary research at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, in Duebendorf, Switzerland. Her research focuses on integration and integrative leadership in large inter- and transdisciplinary research programs. She co-leads the ITD Alliance (Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity) Working Group on Integration Experts and Expertise.
Thank you very much for this playful tool! Our team enjoyed the workshop at the ITD conference in Utrecht in November 2024 and we are open to use the tool for the research associations we manage. Single problem: finding the TIME to do so…
I would be interested, if you thought about alternatives to the term “traditional” scientist? Unfortunately I don’t have a better idea right now.
Dear Sabine
We are happy that you enjoyed our workshop and that you will try to find the time to use the tool for research associations you manage.
Finding the time can indeed be challenging. Two strategies to overcome this could be (1) planning time and space for reflection from the project start and anchoring them in the project proposal and (2) emphasizing the added value of the role reflection tool for the overall project/program/association, the team, and the individuals. We, for example, observed in both projects where we applied the reflection tool that, after the workshop, researchers with broad role profiles started to delegate more tasks. If you still find a 1-hour workshop too long, you could gather the survey data electronically from participants prior to the meeting and focus the in-person meeting on joint discussion.
Regarding the “traditional” scientist you could maybe use “reflective” scientist as Wittmayer and Schäpke (2014) did or go with “knowledge provider” as Miller (2013) uses to describe the role of science more generally. We chose the term “traditional” scientist to make it clearly distinguishable to the role of the self-reflexive scientist and describe a narrower role than “knowledge provider” which in our view could also encompass the role of knowledge broker for example.
Thank you, Hanna, very helpful answers! I go with “knowledge provider”. And yes, we have to plan this reflection in advance, preferably already in the proposal. I could also imagine to put it on the agenda of the kick-off session, where roles and final structures are discussed. At that time, we have a commitment in the group, which is much more “on the ground” than before the funding is there.
This is really useful. Thank you! I look forward to applying it with inter- and transdisciplinary teams
Dear Rebecca,
We are happy that you will be applying our tool in inter- and transdisciplinary teams!
If you can, we would be delighted if you shared how (or even if) you adapted the tool for transdisciplinary teams as we have only applied it in interdisciplinary teams so far.
Thanks for this! No more words this time! will use i!
bests,
Thank you very much for sharing this valuable experience, especially considering its potential to be implemented in a workshop format !
In this regard, two points may be worth highlighting :
First, it seems that the role of the process facilitator holds a foundational and strategic position among the six identified roles. The effective realization of other roles—such as knowledge integrator, knowledge broker, and even change agent—largely depends on the presence of a collaborative, balanced, and safe space for interaction. The individual taking on this role should also be well acquainted with the characteristics and challenges of the other roles in order to support their emergence and flourishing within the project.
Second, it may be beneficial to consider developing a simple digital tool or online platform to enable virtual use of this role reflection approach. This would allow dispersed team members, who may not have the possibility to attend in-person workshops, to still engage with the tool effectively and benefit from its insights.
Best wishes
Dear Reza,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!
First, indeed, the process facilitator role can be seen as more foundational as it provides a team with spaces and formats to learn, reflect, deliberate, and condense outcomes together with actors from different fields. However, we also see tasks like this reflected in the knowledge integrator role. For example with the task of designing an integration process and integrated outputs. This can also be done in a foundational and strategic way. The point we are trying to make is that researchers in an inter- and transdisciplinary research project don’t have to choose between roles and pick only one but can take on different roles within the same project. These roles (or role combinations) can change over time, which then also helps to be familiar with characteristics and challenges of the other roles.
Second, an online version of the tool would be very helpful to gather, share, and compare data across multiple projects to draw findings from larger samples. Thank you very much for highlighting that it would also be helpful for quick visualizations, especially in a remote workshop format. We will keep this in mind for further development of the tool.
Dear Hanna
Thank you very much for your helpful response.
Your topic is very interesting and innovative, and it raises many questions in my mind 🙂
– On what basis do you usually select participants for this workshop? Do all members of an interdisciplinary team attend the workshop, or only specific members?
– Do participants engage in group work during your workshop?
Dear Reza,
It’s great to read that our blogpost on the topic of roles in inter- and transdisciplinary projects sparks so many thoughts.
– We have conducted the workshop as described in the paper and as hinted at in the blogpost in two different inter- and transdisciplinary research projects (TRAPEGO and TREBRIDGE). We invited the whole interdisciplinary research team, meaning all researchers involved in the respective project. So, we ended up facilitating the workshops for roughly 12-15 researchers (us included). Afterwards, we provided the role survey (which you can find in the supplementary material of our publication) to those researchers who could not make it to the workshop.
Of course it would be interesting to use (an adapted form of) the role survey in a transdisciplinary setting as well – something we haven’t done yet.
– After filling out the role survey and individually reflecting on opportunities, challenges, and coping strategies, the participants engaged in breakout group and plenary discussions during the workshop. We included a sample role workshop program in the supplementary material which describes the workshop agenda a bit more in detail.
Dear Hanna
Many thanks for your thorough and thoughtful explanation.
Valuable addition to a project team’s understanding of themselves, their relationship to others and an indicator of gaps in the team’s capacity and competencies to having a holistic outcome. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for your comment, we are delighted that you find our contribution valuable.
Thank you, Bruce, for your nice feedback! Indeed, applying the reflection tool helped the project team to reflect on whether its aggregated role profiles matched the project’s goals. It also helped some team members with very broad role profiles to prioritize.
And as you mention relationship to others: in the group discussions, we saw that self-perception of one’s own roles does not always align with external perception. For instance, some researchers considered themselves not to be change agents, whereas others in the team considered them to be playing this role rather actively! This raises interesting follow-up questions, e.g., did researchers in this case feel that the change agent role is less socially desirable and accepted, and therefore do not self-identify with it?