Processes – Integration and Implementation Insights

Building trust in researching about and engaging with underserved communities

June 9, 2026June 9, 2026

By Katrina Messiha.

How can we ensure that the many people whose lives are shaped by homelessness, migration, poverty, trauma, mental illness, caring responsibilities, social isolation and other contributors to marginalisation are adequately represented and well engaged with in relevant research?

This is important because if some lives are missing from the evidence base, they may also be missing from the services, policies and practices built upon it. But what happens when researchers try to engage people whose previous encounters with healthcare, welfare, housing, immigration or other public systems, including research, may have been difficult, exhausting or even harmful?

The usual language used to describe such people is “hard to reach,” “seldom heard” or “difficult to engage.” These phrases may be commonly used and well intended, but they can hide a pressing question: Where does trust already exist and how can research begin there?

Cultivating epistemic humility in research teams

June 2, 2026

By Faye Miller.

faye-miller_2025 — Faye Miller (biography)

What makes it so challenging for research teams to be truly receptive to being wrong? And what can teams do to make doubt expressible and useful?

Being aware that knowledge is always situational, incomplete, and prone to error, as well as the willingness to hold opinions tentatively, be receptive to change, and recognise the boundaries of understanding, are all components of epistemic humility. Humility about what one knows and can know is an intellectual quality in individual researchers. Yet epistemic humility also has a structural dimension: which doubts get expressed, whose knowledge is heard, and how teams handle what they don’t yet know, are challenges that go beyond the individual researcher to shape how research teams function.

This i2Insights contribution is an attempt to highlight two challenges that need to be addressed:

the confidence trap, built on the pressure to exude certainty, and
the silence trap, arising from the social dynamics that can suppress productive doubt.

Tinkering workshops: Exploring children’s perceptions of problems and potential solutions

June 2, 2026May 26, 2026

By Ina Opitz, Melanie Kryst, Pia von den Benken and Audrey Podann.

authors_opitz_kryst_benken_podann — 1. Ina Opitz (biography)
2. Melanie Kryst (biography)
3. Pia von den Benken (biography)
4. Audrey Podann (biography)

How can children’s everyday experiences and perceptions of problems and solutions be made accessible for potential inclusion in transdisciplinary research? How can these processes also be used to familiarise children with the fundamentals of transdisciplinarity?

We have developed a three-hour “tinkering workshop,” based on design science principles, to encourage children to think about their environment and identify problems and solutions in a playful and creative way.

Our tinkering workshop is suitable for children aged between 9 and 12 years. We have tried it out in four workshops with a total of 56 children, focusing on the problem of plastic waste.

Transdisciplinarity in education: Aligning conceptualisation, configuration and competencies

June 2, 2026May 12, 2026

By Hussein Zeidan.

How can we move from broad visions of transdisciplinarity to concrete educational practices that students can meaningfully engage with? What kinds of course designs genuinely support learning in complex, real‑world settings? And how do we ensure clarity, for both students and educators, about what these courses are meant to achieve?

These questions sit at the heart of many conversations among educators seeking to bring transdisciplinarity into their teaching practice. We want students to learn how to navigate complex problems, draw on multiple ways of knowing and develop the mindsets that allow them to work across boundaries with confidence. Yet the very flexibility that makes transdisciplinarity appealing can also make it difficult to design courses that are clear, supportive and aligned.

A communication framework for public engagement and impact

April 28, 2026April 28, 2026

By Judith Friedlander and Tania Leimbach.

authors_judith-friedlander_tania_leimbach — 1. Judith Friedlander (biography)
2. Tania Leimbach (biography)

How can researchers cut through ‘the infoglut’ to share their findings with communities? What communication strategies help raise the agenda of critical issues to drive impactful advocacy and action?

As researchers and practitioners, we want to better understand how to effectively frame critical issues in a hybrid media system, facilitate media uptake and engage the public in scalable change-making. To this end, we developed the MAVEN communication framework, which consists of:

Meta-frames (developing overarching concepts);
Actions and Applications (supporting local pilots and scalability);
Values (identifying shared community values and news values);
Evidence and Ethos (messaging from reputable stakeholders), and
News media (disseminating information within a hybrid media system).

Five structural levers to reopen feedback loops that are resistant to external evidence

May 12, 2026April 21, 2026

By Lachlan S. McGill.

lachlan-mcgill — Lachlan S. McGill (biography)

When feedback loops have become resistant to external evidence, what are some potential ways of intervening to reopen them?

This i2Insights contribution builds on my previous post which covers understanding why feedback loops can become resistant to external evidence and how to diagnose such a structural problem.

Here I introduce five structural ways to intervene in such a closed feedback loop. These are structural levers, each targeting a different aspect of how signals flow, how authority is allocated, and how evaluative standards are defined.

One practical note before beginning. Applying the interventions below often requires institutional authority, coalition building, or regulatory support, so that isolated actors may not be able to deploy them fully, leaving the problematic dominant structure intact. The five levers describe what structural intervention looks like but are not a guarantee that it will succeed.

Understanding and diagnosing when feedback loops become resistant to external evidence

May 5, 2026April 21, 2026

By Lachlan S. McGill.

Why does better evidence sometimes fail to improve decision making? How can we tell if this is caused by feedback loops becoming resistant to external evidence?

Understanding how structural patterns become problematic

In most organisations, decisions are embedded in feedback loops that connect indicators, incentives, and authority structures. These loops determine what counts as success, which signals influence decisions, and how performance is evaluated over time.

When feedback loops are well aligned with system goals, they support learning. However, feedback loops can also evolve in ways that reinforce a narrow definition of success. This is generally associated with a system relying on a small number of indicators to guide decisions. Common examples include financial return on investment, productivity or output measures, growth targets, publication counts or grant income, and compliance indicators.

Boundaries as opportunities for learning

April 27, 2026April 14, 2026

By Roger Duck and Jane Searles.

author_roger-duck_jane-searles — 1. Roger Duck (biography)
2. Jane Searles (biography)

Think of a time when you noticed how different ‘they’ are from ‘us’. In that moment, did the relationship become more interesting and alive? Or did it flatten into what looked like a boundary – a barrier to be overcome or a connection to be engineered?

This i2Insights contribution is intended to stimulate your imagination by giving examples from practice of relationships between people and teams being treated as opportunities for learning, rather than boundaries.

Most readers of i2Insights work in research. We believe there is much of relevance here for any context in which people are working together, including research teams.

The context

We expand here on the idea that ‘a system boundary is simultaneously a process of drawing a distinction and identifying an active relationship of mutual learning’ (Duck and Searles 2021).

Navigating inter- and transdisciplinary PhD supervision: Practical questions for students and supervisors

May 12, 2026April 7, 2026

By Erika Angarita, Anna Hajdu, Yanyan Huang, BinBin Pearce, Guadalupe Peres-Cajías, Hussein Zeidan and Yuanyuan Zhu.

authors_angarita_hajdu_huang_pearce_peres-cajías_zeidan_zhu — 1. Erika Angarita; 2. Anna Hajdu; 3. Yanyan Huang; 4. BinBin Pearce; 5. Guadalupe Peres-Cajías; 6. Hussein Zeidan; 7. Yuanyuan Zhu (biographies)

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.

Developing a conceptual framework to support communication, collaboration and integration

March 31, 2026March 24, 2026

By Hanna Salomon, Jialin Zhang and Sabine Hoffmann.

authors_hanna-salomon_jalin-zhang_sabine-hoffmann — 1. Hanna Salomon (biography)
2. Jialin Zhang (biography)
3. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)

How can the process of developing a conceptual framework in an inter- and transdisciplinary research project itself create valuable space for reflection, alignment, and learning?

What we have found when developing a project-specific conceptual framework is that the process is as important, if not more important, for the research team than the emerging conceptual framework itself. The process provides space and time to discuss and deep-dive into concepts and terms used within the research team leading to much needed discussions and insights for the individual researchers.

The Cultiv8 tool Part 1: Actionable insights for cultivating trust

March 19, 2026March 17, 2026

By Julia E. Moore and Sobia Khan.

authors_julia-moore_sobia-khan — 1. Julia E Moore (biography)
2. Sobia Khan (biography)

What are some useful ways of thinking about trust when developing plans to implement your research or strengthen your team? More importantly, what are some practical ways to build trust both as an individual and as an organisation?

Indeed, when asked about some of the most challenging parts of implementing changes and taking part in research collaborations, people often talk about trust. Trust is essential for equity and for working with people in effective ways, but so few of us are trained in how to build trust.

This i2Insights contribution provides a practical approach to thinking about trust, along with actionable steps to cultivate trust to help you achieve your goals, whether you are working with others to implement evidence or looking to strengthen your team dynamics.

From slogan to practice: Restoring transdisciplinarity as a serious way of working

March 19, 2026March 10, 2026

By Hussein Zeidan.

Do you sense a growing gap between the promise of transdisciplinarity and the way it is often practised? Have you recognised instances where a paper praises integration, yet treats it as little more than a symbolic gesture, instead of a serious intellectual and ethical commitment?

How did we get here, and how can we reclaim transdiscipinarity from superficial habits that weaken its potential?

How did we get here?

The rise of transdisciplinarity has been remarkable. Funding agencies promote it. Universities showcase it. New centres and programmes are built around it. This visibility has helped many people experiment with new forms of collaboration.