Results from your search will be shown on this page below the search form – you may need to scroll down to the results if the page does not automatically take you there after you submit your search.
Instructions:
- All blog posts are searched (pages from the menu are not searched)
- Search outputs are weighted by relevance.
- If searching with two or more words, the system uses an AND operator.
- Selecting a tag, author tag and/or category binds the search to only those posts which have those taxonomy term/s.
- A search output can be obtained by filling out any one field (ie., the search box; or, categories; or, tags; or, authors). If all fields are left blank, then the search returns the blog scroll.
- Exact word combinations can be searched for by using quotation marks (eg., “transdisciplinary learning”).
- Keyword matching is on partial words.
- The reset button (beneath the ‘Submit search’ button) will clear all entries in the search form, as will clicking on the ‘Search…’ link in the top of the right sidebar; or, reloading the page.
- Stopwords are used and for more information on stopwords and how search generally works on this page, see the ‘in-detail’ instructions below.
The search function checks all blog posts but not pages (ie., it does not check the ‘About’, ‘Index’ and other pages listed in the main menu).
For posts, search checks within titles, body text, category and tag text (and not comments).
Searches are weighted by relevance, with affects the order in which posts appear, with titles and content getting the most weighting, tags and categories lesser weighting.
Increasing the number of search terms and selections generally focuses the search output (ie., decreases the number of outputs).
Keyword matching is based on whole words.
If you enter two or more words into the search box, the relationship between the words is based on an AND operator (meaning the more words you add, the tighter (less content is returned in) the search output).
- For example, entering transdisciplinary learning into the search box would provide an output that lists all posts with both the word transdisciplinary and the word learning anywhere in the text. Posts with only transdisciplinary in the text or posts with only learning in the text would not be included in the output.
To find a specific word combination (eg., critical systems), wrap in quotation marks (ie., “critical systems“).
The search system uses ‘stopwords’; which are words that are overly common and so are excluded from being searched for if they are put into the search field (in order to avoid flooding the user with results). For example, words such as ‘has’, ‘sometimes’, ’whether’ are stopwords and can’t be searched on individually (that is, no search result will be returned). Such stopwords can be entered as part of a string of words, but as they are not in the search index they do not count towards the search output. There are also words that are very common across our blog posts and which we allow (to be searched on). These words relate to the way we build the content of our posts (eg., ‘biography’; ‘online’) or are related to the blog’s subject matter (eg., ‘research’, ‘university’). Just be aware that if you search on such words (either alone or in a string), you will get a very large number of results. At the time of writing, the following words are examples to avoid using: biography; change; development; experience; knowledge; science; PhD; policy; practice; process; research; social; time; university; work. A good rule of thumb if using a single search term and if there are a lot of results returned (in 2026, there were over 500 blog posts on this site), is to use one or more of the other fields (eg., tag), or add extra search terms to the search field, or try a different term that speaks to what you are searching for.
When you open a post that was found by your search, you can find where your specific word or word combination appears by using your computer’s search function (eg., on a computer running Microsoft Windows, Control ‘F’ will allow you to search the post (as well as anything else in the active screen)).
Restrict searches to particular tags, categories and/or author tags by using the dropdown selectors.
- Eg., if you choose the tag Advocacy, the search will only be conducted within posts that have that tag assigned to them.
- If you added the category Cases to that search, then only posts that had both the tag Advocacy and the category Cases assigned to them would be searched.
An alternative to selecting categories, tags or authors from their respective long drop-down list is to type the term or author name you are looking for in the relevant selector field. Typing one letter will jump to the lead word in the alphabetical listing (ie, typing ‘s’ takes you to the first tag or category in the list of those starting with ‘s’). Further addition of letters will home in on a tag, category or author until it is found or until the choice of letters exhausts the possible set of tags, categories or authors (in which case that tag, category or author is not in our list). NOTE: all authors are also available in reverse name order under ‘Authors‘ in the menu bar.
In the category, tag and author dropdown list, the number in brackets after each entry indicates the number of posts with that category, tag or author assigned to them.
Tags or authors with a zero in brackets “(0)”, placed after the tag or author text, are not currently linked to any blog posts. In the case of tags, most of these tags identify alternative tags, which, if searched, will yield a result. For example, “Assumptions – see ‘Mental models’ tag (0)” signifies that blog posts about ‘assumptions’ are tagged with ‘mental models’ and not ‘assumptions.’ Occasionally there will be a tag (or author tag) with “(0)” which refers to a new tag (or author tag) on a blog post which has not yet been made public. This tag (or author tag) will be searchable once the blog post is public (usually within a week).
For the category selector, choosing one of the two parent categories (main topics or resource types) searches all blog posts, as all blog posts are assigned a main topic and a resource type.
Using the concept of risk for transdisciplinary assessment
By Greg Schreiner
Global development aspirations, such as those endorsed within the Sustainable Development Goals, are complex. Sometimes the science is contested, the values are divergent, and the solutions are unclear. How can researchers help stakeholders and policy-makers use credible knowledge for decision-making, which accounts for the full range of trade-off implications?
‘Assessments’ are now commonly used.Following their formal adoption by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) in the early 1990s, they have been used at the science-society-policy interface to tackle global questions relating to biodiversity and ecosystems services, human well-being, ozone depletion, water management, agricultural production, and many more.
Given the nature of the questions they address, assessments are transdisciplinary, involving integration of different knowledge domains. In this piece, I briefly explore what an assessment is and then describe the assessment for shale gas development in South Africa, where we used the concept of risk as the integrative framework.
Ten essentials for more impactful and integrated research on transformations
By Ioan Fazey
What can we learn when we bring together different insights from the rich and diverse traditions of action-oriented research? Will this help us more effectively understand and navigate our way through a world of change to ensure knowledge production contributes more directly to societal needs?
In a recent publication (Fazey et al., 2018), we explored the critical question of how to develop innovative, transformative solutions and knowledge about how to implement them. Addressing these questions requires much more engagement with more practical forms of knowledge, as well as learning from action and change in much more direct ways than currently occurs in academia. It is like learning to ride a bicycle, which can’t be done just by watching a powerpoint presentation, and which requires learning by “getting hands dirty” and by falling off and starting again.
Five principles of holistic science communication
By Suzi Spitzer
How can we effectively engage in the practice and art of science communication to increase both public understanding and public impact of our science? Here I present five principles based on what I learned at the Science of Science Communication III Sackler Colloquium at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC in November 2017.
1. Assemble a diverse and interdisciplinary team
- Scientists should recognize that while they may be an expert on a particular facet of a complex problem, they may not be qualified to serve as an expert on all aspects of the problem. Therefore, scientists and communicators should collaborate to form interdisciplinary scientific teams to best address complex issues.
- Science is like any other good or service—it must be strategically communicated if we want members of the public to accept, use, or support it in their daily lives. Thus, research scientists need to partner with content creators and practitioners in order to effectively share and “sell” scientific results.
- Collaboration often improves decision making and problem solving processes. People have diverse cognitive models that affect the way each of us sees the world and how we understand or resolve problems. Adequate “thought world diversity” can help teams create and communicate science that is more creative, representative of a wider population, and more broadly applicable.
CoNavigator: Hands-on interdisciplinary problem solving
By Katrine Lindvig, Line Hillersdal and David Earle
2. Line Hillersdal (biography)
3. David Earle (biography)
How can we resolve the stark disparity between theoretical knowledge about interdisciplinary approaches and practical applications? How can we get from written guidelines to actual practices, especially taking into account the contextual nature of knowledge production; not least when the collaborating partners come from different disciplinary fields with diverse expectations and concerns?
For the past few years, we have been developing ways in which academic theory and physical interactions can be combined. The result is CoNavigator – a hands-on, 3-dimensional and gamified tool which can be used:
- for learning purposes in educational settings
- as a fast-tracking tool for interdisciplinary problem solving.
CoNavigator is a tool which allows groups to collaborate on a 3-dimensional visualisation of the interdisciplinary topography of a given field or theme.
Two types of interdisciplinary scholarship
By Andi Hess
Would it be helpful to identify two distinct forms of interdisciplinary scholarship ― 1) individual interdisciplinarity and 2) interdisciplinary dialogue and team science ― and to make this distinction explicit in the literature? What are the benefits and challenges of each? Are a different set of resources and methods required to achieve effective interdisciplinary scholarship?
As integration scientists are aware, there are many analyses of appropriate methods for conducting interdisciplinary work. Each has its own benefits and challenges, and each requires a different set of resources and methods for achieving effective interdisciplinary scholarship.
Overcoming a paradox? Preparing students for transdisciplinary environments
By Machiel Keestra
How can we adequately prepare and train students to navigate transdisciplinary environments? How can we develop hybrid spaces in our universities that are suitable for transdisciplinary education?
These questions were considered by a plenary panel, which I organised and chaired at the International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2017 at Leuphana University, Germany. Three major educational requirements were identified:
- long-term collaborations with businesses, as well as non-governmental, governmental and community organisations
- teaching particular dispositions and competencies
- preparing students for intercultural endeavours.