Transdisciplinary learning as U-shaped learning

13 thoughts on “Transdisciplinary learning as U-shaped learning”

1. This is a fascinating way of looking at the competencies needed in transdisciplinarity learning. As someone who’s involved in coordinating this within a transdisciplinary research center, this framework illustrates much of what we’re aiming to do in our internal and external education efforts. Thank you for sharing and I look forward to more of your contributions.

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   • Thanks for your positive feedback, Darius. It would be great to hear more about your internal and external education efforts.

     Reply

2. Gemma, this is a beautiful blog … I’ve been waiting for it.  

   I’d like to begin with a question before sharing some of my thoughts and thinking alongside your work, since we’re navigating the same terrain ;).

   The T‑shape model assumes a developmental progression: students begin grounded in professional or disciplinary training, building the vertical “stem” before they can meaningfully contribute to the horizontal “top”,  the space of integration. In the U‑shape metaphor, actionability and integration appear as core components, and visually, with the U-shape metaphor, seem to carry similar weight (something I remain cautious about). My question is: how can we translate these expectations (educationally) for students who are still on their learning journey in a field? 

   And to relate this to Faye’s comment, while I agree that our attachment to our own fields can lead us to overlook alternative ways of doing things when we focus too narrowly on the stem of the T, I think an additional challenge is that other capacities for learning and lived experience also form a kind of “stem.” Individuals continually accumulate practice‑based and experiential knowledge, and this shapes their grounding just as disciplinary training does. I wouldn’t equate lived experience with integration or actionability, as people can become anchored in habitual modes of knowing and doing even when those modes are not academically disciplinary.

   My comment on transdisciplinary education as a space for developing competencies begins with Piaget. He is often referred to as the person who coined transdisciplinarity (though I find this historically inaccurate, as Mahan was already defending his thesis on transdisciplinarity by the time Piaget entered the conversation, but this deserves further investigation). Still, it is interesting,  and slightly ironic,  to link Piaget to current debates: he shaped early discussions on transdisciplinarity in higher education, yet his work in moral psychology emphasised developmental thresholds. He argued that there is little purpose in training children in moral reasoning before certain cognitive structures have matured (he placed this threshold around age seven, if I remember right). In one way or another, he was suggesting that a certain level of maturity is required before specific capacities can form.
   While later research has challenged aspects of his developmental staging, I find it striking how far our discussions of transdisciplinary competencies sit from debates in moral and developmental psychology. There is much to learn and integrate from those conversations.

   I realise I’ve drifted into morality (I do tend to take the long route to make my point), but this is precisely where my unease with the duo of integration and actionability sits. In our own diagnosis of transdisciplinarity in education (Zeidan et al., 2016), we noticed that most attempts to introduce it into educational settings are led by practitioners of transdisciplinarity itself. And like any field, transdisciplinarity is not immune to the implicit values and biases researchers bring with them.

   Integration and actionability often reflect the language of a projectified version of transdisciplinarity, pop‑transdisciplinarity, where quick, surface‑level integrative exercises are used to rapidly “activate” a solution.  A vocabulary that is increasingly seeping into educational discourse. A similar unease is present in Barnett (2021)’s critique of higher education, where he traces how corporate and market‑driven language has shaped educational reforms for decades: the shift from knowledge to skills and employability; the reconstruction of students not as agents but as customers and consumers; and the co‑optation of critical thinking and knowledge production to serve employability and performativity, measurable through “impact.”

   Now, I am raising these points as (sharing the same boat) I am still trying to understand what transdisciplinary education is becoming. In many ways, it feels like we are repurposing earlier conversations about skills and employability, then about social entrepreneurship as a “better” version, and recently, with integration being a major theme in conversations about transdisciplinarity, we seem to be replicating the language of the consulting field. This is not to question the relevance of integration and actionability, but rather to ask myself, and others: what is genuinely different in what we are doing?

   While integration and actionability certainly matter, they are contextually situated. This does not mean we should ignore them, but when transdisciplinarity presents them as its core values, I worry it risks narrowing its own horizon. Both aspects rely heavily on discipline, not only academic discipline, but epistemic grounding more broadly. It is difficult to imagine meaningful integration achieved by generalists who have not yet developed depth in their own field, epistemology, or methods.

   The same applies to actionability: today’s complex problems require more than methodological competence. They require long breath, persistence, dedication, and the willingness to bend methods in service of how we tackle the problem and how we bring others on board. These are character traits, not merely competencies. And these traits are usually mobilised through a mix of normative stance and methodological commitment. Yet questions of normativity remain extremely implicit, often gestured toward through broad language about inclusivity or participation.

   This reminds me of a well‑framed argument about the purpose of education (Biesta, 2008), which uses the Parks–Eichmann paradox to show that if we focus solely on skills and competencies, we risk producing technically capable individuals who follow procedures well but lack moral and political judgment, such as the figure of Eichmann. In contrast, through this lens, Rosa Parks represents educated disobedience.

   To wrap up this long comment, I appreciate this conversation as it offers a generous space for thinking alongside one another. These exchanges are genuinely helpful for me as I continue developing work I’m currently writing that I hope will see the light of publication soon. I also see considerable room for revisiting how transdisciplinarity is positioned within our broader knowledge‑production systems, and what questions it is actually trying to answer.

   thank you deeply

   – Barnett, R. (2021). The philosophy of higher education: A critical introduction. Routledge.
   – Biesta, G. (2008). Good education in an age of measurement: on the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 33-46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11092-008-9064-9
   – Zeidan, H., Rai, S. S., & Zweekhorst, M. (2026). Making sense of transdisciplinarity in education: Re‐visiting its conceptualisation, configuration and competencies. Review of Education, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.70147

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   • Sorry for the wrong citation of Biesta work.
     Below is the right one.

     Biesta, G. (2020). Can the prevailing description of educational reality be considered complete? On the Parks-Eichmann paradox, spooky action at a distance and a missing dimension in the theory of education. Policy Futures in Education, 18(8), 1011-1025.

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     • Thank you, Hussein, for your considered reflections and careful analysis. Such analysis and questioning is vital if we are to avoid “a projectified version of transdisciplinarity” or “pop‑transdisciplinarity”, as you call it. Transdisciplinarity seems, sometimes, forever doomed to be accused of dilettantism; and without methodological and conceptual rigour, it could be in danger of transforming into a set of buzzwords that would not be out of place in a consultancy meeting.

       The issue however here, I would argue, is not TD but that the university community is operating with a dearth of research-informed guidance on how to “do” TD and how to progress to address the very valid concerns you express here. This is changing in recent years but we still have a way to go. Certainly, the U-shape is a compass. But all compasses need a map to pinpoint where you are or where you are going. As an educational science community in higher education, we are still creating the maps we need.

       Why do we have a dearth of maps? The discipline of education and dominant theories of education stem from observations of children. Hence pedagogy. The theories of Piaget (and Vygotsky and others) derived from the study of young children. Universities are not involved in pedagogy but andragogy, which remains under-researched in the educational science field. Studies on higher education, to date, predominantly comprise Scholarship of Teaching and Learning or SoTL. This entails academics (who commonly do not have doctoral training in education) attempting to understand if what they are doing in the university classroom (which is frequently designed without educational expertise) works or not. To really advance and strengthen new approaches like TD, universities need to invest in research programs that inform higher education with the same quality of research that primary and secondary education have benefitted from.

       But there is excellent work happening within our community. For example, the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, where I am based at Utrecht University, funded a three-year project to research how to enhance inter- and transdisciplinarity learning. We created an institutional theory of change, first, to define TD. We then mapped causal pathways to change that built on practice at the institute and recommended new areas for development. We re-designed a university-wide course Climate & Society as an experiment. We used arts practice and journalism as integrative and actionable knowledge boundary objects. We used systems’ thinking and realist evaluation as integrative methodologies and also to explicate causal pathways to change. We used a new format created by our colleague from the Urban Futures Studio, Kelly Streekstra, to help students “future” and integrate their own values and lived experiences into a vision of what is “absurd” about the present and what is a “seed of change”. We worked with the HKU Utrecht School of the Arts to offer students an artistic perspective and the opportunity to express their findings through art. Students worked in teams. During the course and at the course end, students submitted reflections on the process. We are using these to iteratively inform the course but also to analyse if our “experiment” worked. We will publish these results for others. What we found is that students can meaningfully develop integrative capacity through mastering and practicing these methodologies in this setting. We found that students were able to create action pathways that not only gave them a sense of agency but increased their feelings of hope.

       We should all, as a community, continue to question the quality and rigour behind the conceptualisation and practice of TD. Not least, because those with the power to change policy and fund innovation, legitimately call for a rigorous evidence base for change. I have many misgivings about the term “competency”, for example (see O’Sullivan, 2023), which I borrow from educational science. The term “competency” is accepted in educational science as a legitimate expression of learning gain (see, for example, Helker et al., 2024; O’Sullivan et al., 2025; Vermunt et al., 2018). But I chose it (as opposed to capability, for example) because I wanted to use the language of those actors who are operating in arenas where they can directly influence educational and research policies and funding for change.

       As a community, it would be great to continue this conversation on how we can inform developments with the quality of evidence needed to instill confidence in what are vital innovations in knowledge creation, transfer and learning.

       References
       Helker, K., M. Bruns, I.M.M.J. Reymen, and J.D. Vermunt. (2024). A framework for capturing student learning in challenge-based learning. Active Learning in Higher Education 0, no. 0: 14697874241230459. doi:10.1177/14697874241230459.

       O’Sullivan, G., Baggen, Y., Tho, C., Georgiou, D., Pennings, H. J. M., & van den Beemt, A. (2025). The role of academic and extra-academic actors in transdisciplinary challenge-based learning. Teaching in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2025.2468978

       Vermunt, J. D., Ilie, S., & Vignoles, A. (2018). Building the foundations for measuring learning gain in higher education: a conceptual framework and measurement instrument. Higher Education Pedagogies, 3(1), 266–301. https://doi-org.utrechtuniversity.idm.oclc.org/10.1080/23752696.2018.1484672

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       • Agree with you!
         I’m always happy about these conversations, and I really enjoy learning how different places are exploring it and doing it.
         It’s genuinely energizing to share these reflections together.
         Already looking forward to the result of these efforts!

         Reply

3. Thank you, Gemma for this great and interesting post, and for your research on this. I think the U shaped model is a very useful reframe and a clear way to describe a complex experience and process for TD work, for all actors involved. I also think the ballast idea captures how these interpersonal, intrapersonal and cognitive competencies are not just add-ons but the very things which provide balance to the whole process being pulled in so many disparate directions.

   U shaped offers a challenging critique to the T shaped approach, as TD work is so different to the collaborative process that T shaped skills were designed for. T shaped still implies a pre-existing vertical bar of expertise for each individual and just the ability to bridge between them, but TD work is about producing new knowledge which didn’t exist before and collaboratively defining problems alongside extra-academic actors who don’t have any of this vertical bar at all, such as a person with lived experience of floods from your example. There is no room for that kind of expertise in T shaped, nor is there anything representing actionable knowledge capacity and closing the knowledge–action gap only going as far as people being able to take other perspectives into consideration.

   The ballast is playing quite an important role in your model that the horizontal bar of T shaped never intended. U shaped’s two arms map directly onto filling both gaps – the down-stroke into integration makes space for diverse knowledge, including non-disciplinary expertise, and the up-stroke into action gives the missing endpoint T shaped never had.

   I wonder if you see the ballast competencies as TD learning developing differently for students versus extra-academic actors, given that they enter the U from such different starting points? Does the model assume a shared pace of development, or is that variation part of what “co-creating the process” means?

   Thanks again, I’m interested to see how the U shaped model develops.

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   • Dear Faye,

     Thank you so much for the time you took to read the post and reply with such thoughtfulness. I created the U-shape so I could make sense of the maze of transdisciplinary (TD) approaches. Prior to this, the T-shape had been proposed as an illustration of how disciplinary education needs to be complemented by broad competencies so graduates can function better in the workplace. The U really focuses on what capacities any actor at any stage needs to work with other complex networks of actors and complex networks of knowledge with the intention of creating knowledge that leads to action. Usually, in the literature, this action or action pathway is in response to a problem that is shared by all actors and that is defined and analysed by all. The action pathway needs to take into consideration the needs of all and to acknowledge that values are implicit in the problem definition and perceived action pathway.

     You highlighted something very important that I did not address: how is this different for students, academics or extra-academic actors? I dare say: ‘Not at all’. The ballast is akin to Nicolescu’s “included middle” and the logic of this space. Your description of the arrow sweeping down through integration and up into action brings this alive to me. The ballast is the space of uncertainty that we occupy as human beings whenever we bring what we know into a situation with others – who know other things – and together we try to create new understanding somewhere in the middle. If we can reach understanding, we can act.

     This isn’t a comfortable space or easy work. And to be able to be present actively in this space, it is suggested we need to have certain inter- and intra-personal and cognitive competencies. Much has been written here by Tanya Augsburg, Shalini Misra and others.

     TD is a paradigm shift because it emphasises that all human engagement is an engagement of all we are as people. More akin to what Hussein, in his comment of 3 June 2026 on this website, described as the work of al‑Ghazālī and Syed Muhammad Naquib al‑Attas: this is the human as a “composite of faculties: ʿaql (intellect), nutq (reason/speech), nafs (self), qalb (heart), and rūḥ (spirit)”.

     The ballast says that when we want to act in a TD way, we are entering a space where we need to feel competent and assured of what is happening internally and between us and others.

     Integration is not a destination, it is a paradigm shift for how we work together to create knowledge that leads to action in this place we call society. It asks us to recognise that this composite of faculties is influencing how we are present in this included middle. It says that if we ignore that many knowledges are present in the included middle, we risk, like a metal ball in pinball machine, being stuck in a moment, unable to act. Or stuck forever in loops of misguided action that exclude crucial actors and networks of knowledge. We will not know what we do not know.

     The U asks us to step away from boxes created by the old system of hierarchies of knowledge (who is a student, who is an expert, who “knows” and who “believes” etc.). We do not presume that the difference between a 19-year-old undergraduate and an experienced middle-aged scientist or policymaker is an advancement of inter- or intrapersonal competencies with age or experience. (Sometimes, it can feel like the opposite!) The U is, therefore, a universal learning process. When you participate in TD you are invited to reflect on what your competencies are and how you could grow them to act more meaningfully in a space by embracing uncertainty and clearly acknowledging your values and beliefs. This holds true for all actors involved.

     Thank you for prompting this thinking! I look forward to continuing this conversation.

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     • Hi Gemma, thank you for your insightful responses.

       I would like to return to a question I find interesting and one I think should remain open for consideration. The idea Hussein suggested regarding developmental thresholds seems to me a good addition to the question that I raised earlier on whether the U is different for students, academics or extra-academic actors. I hear and agree with your answer “not at all”, drawing upon Nicolescu’s “included middle.” Hussein’s suggestion, if I understand correctly, is that everyone comes into the U with their own stem and related experiences, which he thoughtfully separates from integration or actionability. If this is the case, the ballast might be asking actors to let go of a different anchor, in a way most comfortable to them, considering that disciplinary anchoring has more institutional recognition than experiential anchoring. I wonder whether the model could hold open space for that distinction. This also feels related to Hussein’s point and reference to the human as a composite of faculties; if each actor brings a different stem into the U, perhaps they are also drawing on that composite unevenly, depending on where their grounding is?

       This is also where I find positionality to be pertinent. I am coming from a research background in informed learning and shared understanding, a relational and experiential approach to information literacy in support of transdisciplinarity in higher education and other contexts (Bruce, 2008; Miller, 2026), complementary to the teaching and learning angles you and Hussein bring. I think both the U and the ballast work well as boundary objects, facilitating a shared conversation among students, academics, and actors outside academia. Their readings reflect our different relationships to power, knowledge, and legitimacy, as well as our respective stages of competency. My own understanding of boundary objects is as tangible yet malleable forms that different groups use and interpret from their own perspectives (Miller, 2020). This seems closely related to your included middle, since that flexibility is what allows a shared conversation to be held across different groups, while also inviting us to keep asking whose reading is being centred within it. So, an open question: universal for whom, and read from where, including my own?

       A recent piece from LSE Impact, based on research by Toomey et al. (2026), offers a hopeful reframe, which I think extends the point about pop-TD you and Hussein are discussing. Gemma, I appreciate how you locate that risk in a dearth of research-informed maps rather than in the meanings of TD itself, and I also wonder whether Hussein’s concern is also partly in the vocabulary itself, how “integration” and “actionability” can carry assumptions, even when underlying research is rigorous. The Toomey et al. piece makes a similar point about impact language more broadly, as terms like “impact planning” assume change is linear and controllable, regardless of how good the research behind them is, and the authors advocate instead for language like “navigating” and “practices of change,” which honours change as relational and ongoing.

       I wonder if “actionability” in the U could shine even more brightly if framed this way – less as a single deliverable and more as the sustained, humble navigation the ballast already seems to be describing. This leads into another question, building on you both: does the ballast already carry everything it needs – normativity, values and ethics, character, and positionality, within it – or is there an opportunity, as it travels into higher education settings, to make that richness even more visible?

       Thank you all so much for this exciting, stimulating thread to co-think in!

       References

       Bruce, C. (2008). Informed learning. Association of College & Research Libraries, Chicago.

       Miller, F. (2020). Producing shared understanding for digital and social innovation: Bridging divides with transdisciplinary information experience concepts and methods. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7372-9

       Miller, F. (2026). Transdisciplinarity. In The Information Literacy Handbook: Charting the Discipline, Kaufmann, K. F. and Maybee, C. (Eds). Facet Publishing: London, UK.

       Toomey, A. H. et al. (2026). Rethinking the language of research impact. Research Evaluation. vol. 35. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvag027

       Reply

       • Faye, thank you for raising these beautifully articulated points.

         To begin, my stance is that the language of actionability and integration is not neutral. It carries philosophical and ideological commitments and it rests on particular ontological and epistemic assumptions.

         My scepticism comes from the sense that the transdisciplinary literature decided long ago that diverse epistemologies can simply be fitted together like pieces of Lego. Yet even Lego pieces require a common shape to connect. This raises a question that continues to trouble me: to what extent are we, as transdisciplinarians, dictating the governing frame and the permissible approaches? and how can we genuinely accommodate ways of knowing and doing that do not share these starting points.
         I agree with you.. our language implicitly reflects our convictions, and I believe we should be more open in explicitly naming our ideological, philosophical, and epistemic commitments.

         This is also the lens through which I observe transdisciplinary education. In my own experience attending modelled transdisciplinary exercises, I often see a very narrow understanding of what counts as legitimate knowing and doing, an understanding shaped by the vocabulary we use, which becomes unsettled when unfamiliar perspectives enter the room.
         For example, “integration” is frequently translated into consensus‑making or compromise, even though we all know these strategies are inadequate for many issues, especially highly contested ones such as climate change. Likewise, “actionability” can slide into superficial pragmatism: a desire to move forward quickly rather than circling back to examine the foundations of the ideas we are working with. This is my experience as someone coming from a very different world, different culture, language, tradition, worldview, ideology, and values.

         Recently, Horn and Urias (2026) examined the dynamics of knowledge integration in student teams and observed how quickly students rush toward shared terminology. They propose adding a dialectical step in transdisciplinary classrooms that invite team member to articulate what specific terms mean to them so that overlaps, differences, and complementarities become visible. Ironically, this echoes what Darbellay (2015) discovered when speaking with transdisciplinarians: many begin working together without ever clarifying what they mean by transdisciplinarity or how they understand its practice. In other words, even the experts skip the very reflexive step they advocate.

         Returning to Gemma’s work, I see tremendous potential in her approach. Yet, speaking honestly but not pessimistically, a quick observation of transdisciplinarity in practice suggests that the field is still not fully prepared to live up to its own claims of openness and integration. There remains considerable room for reflection on how we position our propositions, and on how we sit with the discomfort of uncertainty, ambiguity, and not being in control.

         Thank you again for your insightful comments!

         – Darbellay, F. (2015). Rethinking inter-and transdisciplinarity: Undisciplined knowledge and the emergence of a new thought style. Futures, 65, 163-174.
         – Horn, A., & Urias, E. (2026). Integrating beyond the surface: conceptual disambiguation and conversational learning for shared meaning-making in interdisciplinary teamwork. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-07661-7

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         • Thanks, Hussein, for your additional thoughts and references. I have been reflecting on Horn and Urias’ dialectical step for student teams and on Darbellay’s finding that even TD experts often skip defining transdisciplinarity before collaborating. I think these resonate with an element of my own model on shared understanding, which suggests that before any meaningful bridging there needs to be greater awareness of the knowledge gaps that often remain invisible and unknown. The act of bridging in my model, or “holding” would perhaps be a better term here, shares some parallels with boundary-crossing theory (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011), as well as Bohm’s (1996) conception of dialogue as an evolving process of collective thinking. This approach might be a more concrete way to respond to your question of how we can accommodate different epistemologies with different starting points, without imposing a dominant frame. Perhaps it could be a habit or practice of defining our terms before assuming there is any shared meaning. How else might it be done without those assumptions?

           References

           Akkerman, S. F., & Bakker, A. (2011). Boundary crossing and boundary objects. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 132–169. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0034654311404435

           Bohm, D. (1996). On dialogue. Routledge.

           Reply

           • Hello Faye,

             I really appreciate your reference to the “awareness of the knowledge gaps that often remain invisible and unknown.” This is very close to what I am trying to centralise in part of my critique of pop-transdisciplinarity as currently being practiced.

             One concern I have is that the awareness of these gaps, and much of the intellectual labour required to make them visible, is often implicitly assigned to groups who have experienced marginalisation within the system. We invite them to be present at the table of conversation, and then rely on them to identify and articulate what we ourselves have failed to see. In some ways, this goes further than the problem of only “reaching out” to non-Western knowledge that Goonatilake (1986) critiques.

             For me, pop-transdisciplinarity can sometimes reproduce this dynamic not only in relation to systematically marginalised ways of knowing and doing, but also in relation to disciplinary knowledge itself. We set the table, so to speak, and if physics does not show up, or if medical doctors are reluctant to participate, we can too quickly interpret this as evidence that they are institutionally trapped within their disciplines or being defensive about disciplinary boundaries.

             What I find particularly interesting, and somewhat ironic, is that this attribution of blame emerged with us trying to practice transdisciplinarity.  If I am being completely honest, I sometimes wonder whether this reflects a form of intellectual laziness or “short breath” when it comes to change (which should start with ourselves first).

             This laziness translates differently when it comes to voices we want to include. Not doing our intellectual duty translates into again us asking other ways of knowing and doing to “impress” us into considering adding them to the table, to do the job of translating their ways to a language we understand and can easily fit in our framework (no better example on that other than our obsession with the “post-it notes” culture). This again emphasises our “leading” role. 

             This is why I find your idea of “holding space” particularly compelling. I also really like that you connect it to the idea of habituating or developing this capacity as an ongoing practice. I think that is important because, otherwise, “holding space” itself could potentially slip into another version of the same problem: who is holding the space, on what authority, and according to whose terms? The emphasis on habituating the practice, together with continuous reflection on the process itself, may help mitigate this risk.

             If we are genuinely committed to reciprocal engagement, then I think we also need to ask whether the expectations we place on other ways of knowing and doing should, at least to some extent, be reciprocated. We often ask others to learn our language, understand our frameworks, and engage with our philosophers and conceptual traditions in order to participate meaningfully in our spaces. I think it is only fair, then, that we also demonstrate genuine interest and intellectual effort in learning deeply what others have to say, rather than expecting them to do the majority of the translational work. This point I linked also to reparative practice of transdisciplinarity in my provocation (2026).

             I realise these points may feel uncomfortable to some readers, and I can imagine that some might respond by saying, “But we already approach it differently.” I fully recognise that there are many different practices and approaches within transdisciplinary work, and I do not mean to suggest that everyone is reproducing this dynamic. Rather, I am trying to offer a caricature of the tendency we do not want to see reproduced in transdisciplinary spaces.

             Thank you again for reflecting and opening new horizons for this conversation
             Hussein

             Goonatilake, S. (1986) Thinking intellectual and social history, in Fondazione Giorgio Cini (eds) Science and the Boundaries of Knowledge: The Prologue of Our Cultural Past, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000067812?posInSet=24&queryId=N-EXPLORE-0ee39621-1688-4518-a52f-123a930b9bc4.

             Zeidan, H. (2026). It’s time to call transdisciplinarity’s bluff. Global Social Challenges Journal (published online ahead of print 2026). Retrieved Sep 11, 2026, from https://doi.org/10.1332/27523349Y2025D000000066

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             • Thanks, Hussein. I think your point about the intellectual work involved in “articulating what we ourselves failed to see” is an important reflection. This might also connect to the ballast in Gemma’s U model, where in practice the work of “holding things steady” can fall disproportionately on the people already being asked to translate the most, which can quietly lead to reproducing the same hierarchy that pop-transdisciplinarity claims to change. Thank you for extending “holding space” into this harder question of reciprocal effort – a helpful provocation for reflexive transdisciplinarity, even as many different approaches continue to coexist.

               Reply

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