By Dena Fam, Tanzi Smith and Dana Cordell

What skills and dispositions are required by researchers and practitioners in transdisciplinary research and practice in crossing boundaries, sectors and paradigms?
The insights here come from interviews with 14 internationally recognized transdisciplinary researchers and practitioners, chosen from a diverse range of research and practice-based perspectives.

Here we focus on:
1) skills for specific tasks such as facilitation of a meeting, crafting a well-written report, and communicating effectively across disciplines; and,

2) dispositions, attitudes, orientations and temperaments of an effective researcher/practitioner, i.e., as a way of being.
Six categories of skills and dispositions
The core skills and dispositions of an exceptional transdisciplinary researcher/practitioner can be grouped into six categories, illustrated in the figure below.