Integration

An analytical framework for knowledge co-production

By Marianne Penker

Marianne Penker (biography)

How can students and academics starting out in transdisciplinary research begin to come to grips with knowledge co-production?

Colleagues and I developed a useful analytical framework comprising the following four elements:

  1. typology of actor roles (who?)
  2. research phases (when?)
  3. objectives and forms of actor integration (why?)
  4. types of knowledge (what?).

These four elements are illustrated in the figure below.

The development of the framework was based on the literature and our experiences in running a doctoral school on transdisciplinary sustainability research (see Enengel et al. 2012).

Read more

Improving facilitated modelling

By Vincent de Gooyert

vincent-de-gooyert
Vincent de Gooyert (biography)

Here I explore two outcomes of facilitated modelling – cognitive change and consensus forming – and ask: how can achieving those outcomes be improved?

But first, what is facilitated modelling?

Facilitated modelling is an approach where operational researchers act as facilitators to model an issue collaboratively with stakeholders, usually in a workshop. Operational research, also known as operations research, seeks to improve decision-making by developing and applying analytical methods.

Two central aims of facilitated modelling are to achieve cognitive change and to form consensus.

Cognitive change is the idea that participants of facilitated modelling workshops come in with a certain worldview, and that the intervention leads them to learn about the issue and accordingly change their minds.

Read more

Integration in inter- and transdisciplinary research: how can the leadership challenges be addressed?

By Lisa Deutsch and Sabine Hoffmann

authors_lisa-deutsch_sabine-hoffmann
1. Lisa Deutsch (biography)
2. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)

How can the integration required in large inter- and transdisciplinary programs be effectively led? What challenges do leaders of integration in such programs face and how can they address them? What are the particular challenges in using a theory of change as an integrative tool?

We describe five key challenges that we encountered when leading the integration for a large 10-year inter- and transdisciplinary research program, which explored novel non-grid water and sanitation systems that can function as comparable alternatives to conventional large network-based systems. We experienced these challenges when applying the tool Theory of Change to facilitate communication, collaboration and integration among the team members (for more on theory of change see the i2Insights contribution by Heléne Clark). We also share the strategies we employed to address these challenges. The lessons we developed are likely to be applicable to other inter- and transdisciplinary research programs.

Read more

Dealing with differences in interests through principled negotiation

By Gabriele Bammer

gabriele-bammer_nov-2021
Gabriele Bammer (biography)

How can the interests of a diverse group of researchers and stakeholders tackling a complex societal problem be understood and managed?

Interests arise when a person has a stake in something and stands to gain or lose depending on what happens to that something:

  • researchers commonly have a stake in advancing their work and careers,
  • stakeholders affected by a societal problem generally have a stake in improving the problem, and
  • stakeholders in a position to do something about a problem generally have a stake in improving outcomes for the problem through their sphere of influence.

Interests relate not only to personal conditions or stakes (self-interest), but also to principles such as reducing inequities and promoting justice.

Read more

Ten dialogue methods for integrating judgments

By David McDonald, Gabriele Bammer and Peter Deane

authors_david-mcdonald_gabriele-bammer_peter-deane
1. David McDonald (biography)
2. Gabriele Bammer (biography)
3. Peter Deane (biography)

What formal dialogue methods can assist researchers in synthesising judgments about a complex societal or environmental issue when a range of parties with different perspectives are involved? How can researchers decide which methods will be most suitable for their purposes?

We review ten dialogue methods. Our purpose is not to describe the dialogue methods in detail, but instead to review the circumstances in which each method is likely to be most useful in a research context, bearing in mind that most methods a) were not developed for research, b) can be applied flexibly and c) have evolved into different variations.

Read more

Three lessons for community engagement in international research

By Aysha Fleming

aysha-fleming
Aysha Fleming (biography)

What’s required for researchers to effectively engage with local communities in international research tackling complex socio-ecological problems?

In a project involving Indonesian and Australian researchers working with local communities to restore peatlands in Indonesia, we identified three key elements for international collaboration with stakeholders:

  1. project design
  2. individual and collective skills and competencies
  3. processes to support knowledge integration.

Project design

Read more

Four typical behaviours in interdisciplinary knowledge integration

By Annemarie Horn and Eduardo Urias

authors_annemarie-horn_eduardo-urias
1. Annemarie Horn (biography)
2. Eduardo Urias (biography)

Why do some collaborators in interdisciplinary teamwork clash? And why does collaboration between others seem smooth but not yield anything? What causes these differences in collaboration, and how can this inform interventions to support interdisciplinary collaboration and integration?

When we started teaching an interdisciplinary masters course, we expected it to become a battlefield, based on our reading of countless lists of the challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration. We thought that the students’ diverse study backgrounds – ranging from arts to medicine, and from social sciences to mathematics – would cause tensions; that they would disagree with each other about theories and methods that they were unfamiliar with and held opinions about.

Read more

Boosting the transformative power of transdisciplinarity with quantum theory

By Cyrille Rigolot

cyrille-rigolot
Cyrille Rigolot (biography)

How can transdisciplinarity improve its ability to foster very deep, very fast and very large transformations toward sustainability?

Quantum theory might be a major source of insights in that direction. Although quantum theory is not new to transdisciplinarity, lately it has become much more accessible, practical, and potentially transformative on the ground.

Quantum theory for transdisciplinarity research

In the debates last century about the emerging transdisciplinary research field, quantum theory inspired theorist Basarab Nicolescu to develop three basic ‘axioms’, which he argues should be recognized at the core of transdisciplinarity research, namely:

Read more

Five questions to understand epistemology and its influence on integrative research processes

By Katie Moon, Chris Cvitanovic, Deborah A. Blackman, Ivan R. Scales and Nicola K. Browne

authors_katie-moon_chris-cvitanovic_deborah-blackman_ivan-scales_nicola-browne
1. Katie Moon; 2. Chris Cvitanovic; 3. Deborah A. Blackman; 4. Ivan R. Scales; 5. Nicola K. Browne (biographies)

How can we reduce the barriers to successful integrative research processes? In particular, how can we understand the different epistemologies that underpin knowledge?

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that asks: how do we know what we know? It is concerned with how we can ensure that knowledge is both adequate and legitimate, by considering:

  1. what constitutes a knowledge claim, including the assumptions that are made
  2. how knowledge is produced or acquired
  3. how the extent of its applicability can be determined.

Accordingly, understanding and accounting for different epistemologies is important for developing solutions to contemporary challenges where a range of disciplines and practices converge, each with their own methods and assumptions regarding the adequacy and legitimacy of knowledge.

Read more

Transdisciplinary integration: A multidimensional interactive process

By Dena Fam, Julie Thompson Klein, Sabine Hoffmann, Cynthia Mitchell and Christian Pohl

authors_dena-fam_julie-thompson-klein_sabine-hoffman_cynthia-mitchell_christian-pohl
1. Dena Fam; 2. Julie Thompson Klein; 3. Sabine Hoffmann; 4. Cynthia Mitchell; 5. Christian Pohl (biographies)

The concept of integration is widely regarded as the crux of transdisciplinary research, education, and practice. However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach or methodology. Projects and programs vary in purpose, scale and scope, problem focus, research question, mix of expertise, degree of coordination and communication, timing, and responsibility for integration. Based on findings in a study of integration we conducted (Pohl et al., 2021), we address four common questions to provide insights into transdisciplinary integration as a multidimensional interactive process.

1. Does integration require coming to consensus on a contested issue?

Not necessarily. Agreement on a final single understanding or solution is only one kind of integration.

Other kinds do not require agreement or consensus. Instead, they allow perspectives reflecting different ways of knowing related to different knowledge communities and knowers to coexist. Such other kinds of integration include:

Read more

A new alliance between the natural and human sciences?

By Sergio Mariotti

sergio-mariotti
Sergio Mariotti (biography)

How can we forge a new alliance between the natural and human sciences in order to deal with complex problems? Can economics and engineering show the way? Where does transdisciplinarity fit?

Ilya Prigogine based his 1990s theory of complexity on the need for a “new alliance” between the natural and human sciences in order to restore a unified knowledge based on plurality, diversity and multiple perspectives.

I explore what this would mean if we focus on two disciplines – economics and engineering – in the context of one complex problem: a future society increasingly influenced by the cluster of organizational and market innovations induced by Artificial Intelligence technologies.

Economists and engineers have played a vital role in the evolution of our modern society. The related disciplines have intertwined with each other, leading to mutual cross-fertilization.

Read more

Navigating intercultural relations in transdisciplinary practice: The partial overlaps framework

By David Ludwig, Vitor Renck & Charbel N. El-Hani

authors_david-ludwig_vitor-renck_charbel-el-hani
1. David Ludwig (biography)
2. Vitor Renck (biography)
3. Charbel N. El-Hani (biography)

How can local knowledge be effectively and fairly incorporated in transdisciplinary projects? How can such projects avoid “knowledge mining” and “knowledge appropriation” that recognize marginalized knowledge only where it is convenient for dominant actors and their goals? In addition, how can knowledge integration programs avoid being naive or even harmful by forcing Indigenous people into regimes of knowledge production that continue to be dominated by the perspectives of external researchers?

On the other hand, how can transdisciplinary projects avoid an exclusive focus on difference that risks creating an artificial divide between Indigenous/local and scientific knowledge and that contributes to further marginalization by denying the very possibility of meaningful dialogue?

We have addressed these dilemmas by developing a framework of partial overlaps. This is a model and methodology of relating actors beyond simplistic stories of seamless integration or insurmountable difference (Ludwig 2016, Ludwig and El-Hani 2020).

Read more