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:
- Epistemology: How each supervisor and student understands knowledge, methods, and validity.
- Institutional support and expectations: The context shaping what is possible.
- Complexity management: Working with uncertainty and external partners.
- Career orientation and identity: Finding a place within (or beyond) academia.
- Dissemination pathways: Deciding how and where inter- and transdisciplinary work has an impact.
We review each of these in turn, highlighting useful questions to prompt student and supervisor discussion, followed by the specific problems these questions can help mitigate.
1. Epistemology: How do we understand knowledge and integration?
Inter- and transdisciplinary research requires negotiating different ways of knowing.
Questions for discussion:
- Whose standards of evidence and validation will guide this project, and how will differences between disciplines be handled?
- How do we understand “integration” across disciplines?
- What methodological standards are non-negotiable?
- How will we evaluate rigour in an inter- and transdisciplinary context?
- What tensions do we anticipate between disciplinary depth and integrative breadth?
Why this matters:
Misalignment at the epistemological level often surfaces later as conflict about conceptual framing, methods, or evaluation criteria.
2. Institutional support: What structures enable or constrain this work?
Inter- and transdisciplinary research often stretches institutional norms.
Questions for discussion:
- Does the department/ university/ institute formally recognise inter- or transdisciplinary work?
- How will progress be evaluated in formal milestones?
- What risks and opportunities does the student face in terms of career positioning?
- Who can provide additional intellectual or emotional support?
- Are there structural barriers (funding rules, publication expectations, evaluation committees) we need to anticipate?
Why this matters:
Students frequently carry the burden of navigating institutional ambiguity in relation to inter- and transdisciplinarity alone. Making constraints explicit reduces vulnerability.
3. Career orientation: Where does this work position the student?
Inter- and transdisciplinary research raises specific career questions.
Questions for discussion:
- In which academic or professional communities should this student publish and network?
- How will the student’s work be perceived by hiring committees?
- What balance should be struck between disciplinary credibility and integrative ambition?
- What skills is the student developing beyond research output?
Why this matters:
Inter- and transdisciplinary research can be intellectually exciting but professionally risky. Career positioning requires deliberate strategy.
4. Complexity management: How will we navigate uncertainty and collaboration?
Inter- and transdisciplinary work involves stakeholders, ambiguity, evolving research questions, and shifting research contexts.
Questions for discussion:
- How much flexibility is built into the research design?
- What happens if stakeholders withdraw or conflicts emerge?
- Who is responsible for managing external relationships?
- How do we handle uncertainty in timelines and outputs?
- What emotional or relational challenges might arise?
Why this matters:
Inter- and transdisciplinary research is not only cognitively complex but relationally complex. Supervisory support must take both into account.
5. Dissemination pathways: What counts as impact?
Inter- and transdisciplinary research often aims for societal relevance alongside academic contribution.
Questions for discussion:
- What forms of dissemination are expected (academic articles, policy briefs, stakeholder workshops)?
- How will societal impact be documented?
- What balance should be maintained between peer-reviewed publications and practice-oriented outputs?
- How much time can be allocated to engagement beyond academia?
Why this matters:
Without clarity, students may overextend themselves in societal engagement at the expense of academic progression, or vice versa.
How to use this checklist of questions
This checklist can be used in several ways:
- As a structured supervision meeting agenda
- As an annual reflection tool
- As a diagnostic tool when tensions arise
- As preparation for formal review moments.
Not all questions need to be addressed at once. Some are most relevant early in the PhD, others emerge later.
Short, structured questions make these conversations easier, especially when the topics feel sensitive or unfamiliar. The key is not to search for perfect answers, but to make underlying assumptions visible and to clarify what each student and each supervisor expects.
While no single set of questions can capture the full diversity of inter- and transdisciplinary PhD projects, it is essential to stay open to reflective conversations that make assumptions, expectations, and working styles visible. As a group of (mostly) early-career researchers, we have developed this tool to support exactly this kind of dialogue, not as a template, but as a guide for thoughtful, ongoing reflection between supervisors and doctoral researchers.
Invitation to readers
Have you encountered challenges as a student or supervisor conducting inter- or transdisciplinary research? Do you see other common areas of misunderstanding in addition to the five covered here? Are there conversations you wish had happened earlier or more often? Which of the questions we suggest resonates most with your experience? Are important questions missing? What other practices have you found helpful?
We invite reflections and additions to strengthen collective learning in inter- and transdisciplinary student research supervision.
To find out more:
ITD Alliance Early Career Researchers (ECR) Working Group (2025). The inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) PhD supervision guide. Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD Alliance). (Online – open access): https://itd-alliance.org/working-groups/early-career-researchers/itd-phd-supervision-guide/
The full guide offers a broader set of reflective questions structured across different stages of the PhD journey, along with additional practical suggestions for supervision practice.
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)
Erika Angarita MSc is a researcher at Thünen Institute in Braunschweig Germany, working on strategies for supporting agroecological transition in the agri-food system. Currently, her main interest is on understanding, monitoring, and promoting fundamental changes in agricultural living labs by co-creating monitoring and evaluation frameworks and methodologies to support agroecological transitions in Europe.
Anna Hajdu PhD is an agricultural and ecological economist and an environmental social scientist. She is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO) in Halle (Saale), Germany. Her work focuses on land governance, sustainability transitions, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, and the institutional dynamics shaping change in the agri-food sector. She develops tools to support interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and supervision.
Yanyan Huang PhD is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Her transdisciplinary research, integrating philosophy, management science, systems science, and cognitive perspectives, focuses on the process of externalising embodied shared values in naturally occurring groups to address sustainability challenges.
BinBin J. Pearce PhD is an assistant professor of transdisciplinary design and implementation at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management in the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Her current research interests include understanding policy implementation processes for climate adaptation and heat transition strategies both in the Netherlands and across the European Union. She also develops transdisciplinary concepts related to value-based design, joint problem framing and integrated design and systems thinking.
Guadalupe Peres-Cajias PhD is currently a full-time professor and researcher in the Department of Communication at Universidad Católica Boliviana (La Paz campus). Her work focuses on interpersonal organisational communication aimed at fostering transdisciplinary and collaborative efforts, through multi-stakeholder dialogue, for local development.
Hussein Zeidan MA is a PhD candidate at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His research examines how transdisciplinarity is translated into educational practice and how it is used to cultivate competencies that support student learning and development.
Yuanyuan Zhu PhD is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Health Professions Education at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Her broader research interest is how educational practices can generate meaningful societal impacts and she is actively involved in research on transdisciplinary education.