Boundary objects – Integration and Implementation Insights

Repeat photography in transdisciplinary research

November 3, 2026

By Matthias Bürgi, Elena G. Siegrist and Tamara Estermann.

authors_matthias-burgi_elena-siegrist_tamara-estermann — 1. Matthias Bürgi (biography)
2. Elena G. Siegrist (biography)
3. Tamara Estermann (biography)

How can we visualise changes in landscapes such as melting glaciers, expanding forests, and changes in agriculture and settlement structure? How can such visualisations be incorporated into participatory research processes?

A prime source for documenting landscapes at the local scale and from a human perspective is repeated terrestrial photographs from the same location under similar conditions. Repeat photography is the creation of “then and now” pairs by retaking historical photographs from the same location. This is useful for scientific research, as well as to raise community awareness of landscape changes.

Here we describe how repeat photography can be used, as well as its strengths and weaknesses, highlighting its value for transdisciplinary sustainability science.

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.

Lessons for strengthening community-university partnerships

September 1, 2026May 16, 2023

By David D. Hart, Bridie McGreavy, Anthony Sutton, Gabrielle V. Hillyer and Darren J. Ranco

authors_david-hart_bridie-mcgreavy_anthony-sutton_gabrielle-hillyer_darren-ranco — 1. David D. Hart; 2. Bridie McGreavy; 3. Anthony Sutton; 4. Gabrielle V. Hillyer; 5. Darren J. Ranco (biographies)

In an increasingly polarized world, how can partnerships between communities and universities strengthen the kinds of deliberative and democratic practices that might help address many local and global challenges? How can such partnerships improve practices that involve listening and responding across differences (the deliberative part)? How can they help find ways to make shared decisions and take joint actions, knowing that complete agreement or mutual understanding may never be possible (the democratic part)?

Eight ways research institutes enable interdisciplinary research

August 3, 2023November 16, 2021

By Paul Bolger

author_paul-bolger — Paul Bolger (biography)

One of the most substantial structural changes and investments to support interdisciplinarity within universities has been the widespread establishment of research institutes. Many have made the pursuit of interdisciplinary collaboration a central goal in their research mission. Biancani and colleagues (2014) have likened research institutes to a semi-formal organisation occupying a plane between the formal university and informal research teams. Membership of the semi-formal organisation is voluntary and researchers and groups can flexibly come together for short or long periods and depart when no longer needed.

How do these entities establish collaborative communities, and create the conditions necessary for effective interdisciplinary research?

I suggest there are eight ways research institutes are enabling interdisciplinary research within their organisations and universities, which can also be strengthened in future.

A new boundary object to promote researcher engagement with policy makers / Un nuevo objeto frontera para promover la colaboración de los investigadores con los tomadores de decisiones

April 15, 2022October 3, 2017

By María D. López Rodríguez

A Spanish version of this post is available

Can boundary objects be designed to help researchers and decision makers to interact more effectively? How can the socio-political setting – which will affect decisions made – be reflected in the boundary objects?

Here I describe a new context-specific boundary object to promote decision making based on scientific evidence. But first I provide a brief introduction to boundary objects.

What is a ‘boundary object’?

Productive multivocal analysis – Part 2: Achieving epistemological engagement

March 30, 2023August 3, 2017

By Kristine Lund

In a previous blog post I described multivocality – ie., harnessing multiple voices – in interdisciplinary research and how research I was involved in (Suthers et al., 2013) highlighted pitfalls to be avoided. This blog post examines four ways in which epistemological engagement can be achieved. Two of these are positive and two may have both positive and negative aspects, depending on how the collaboration plays out.

Once a team begins analyzing a shared corpus from different perspectives — in our case, it was a corpus of people solving problems together — it’s the comparison of researchers’ respective analyses that can be a motor for productive epistemological encounters between the researchers.

Methods for integration in transdisciplinary research

January 10, 2020May 9, 2017

By Matthias Bergmann

To make progress in contributing to the solution of complex real-world problems, transdisciplinary research has come to the forefront. By integrating multiple disciplines as well as the expertise of partners from societal practice, transdisciplinary researchers are able to look at a problem from many angles, with the goal of making both societal and scientific advances.

But how can these different types of expertise be integrated into both a better understanding of the problem and more effective ways of addressing it?

Colleagues and I have collected 43 methods from a number of transdisciplinary research projects dealing with a variety of research topics. We have grouped them into seven classes following an epistemological hierarchy. We start with methods in the narrower sense, progressing to integration instruments.

Problem framing and co-creation

August 24, 2022October 27, 2016

By Graeme Nicholas

How can people with quite different ways of ‘seeing’ and thinking about a problem discover and negotiate these differences?

A key element of co-creation is joint problem definition. However, problem definition is likely to be a matter of perspective, or a matter of how each person involved ‘frames’ the problem. Differing frames are inevitable when participants bring their differing expertise and experience to a problem. Methods and processes to support co-creation, then, need to manage the coming together of people with differing ways of framing the problem, so participants can contribute to joint problem definition.

Knowledge synthesis and external representations

June 25, 2025May 3, 2016

By Deana Pennington

Over a decade ago I became interested in the role of external artifacts in enabling knowledge synthesis across disciplinary perspectives, where external artifacts are any simplified physical representation of real phenomena that enable human manipulation of complex concepts. A simulation model is one example of an external artifact. In general every simplified representation of reality is a model, whether that representation occurs in our heads (mental models), on paper (conceptual models) or in a sophisticated computer-based simulation model. And so I embarked on a research agenda to understand the role of data, models, and other forms of external representations in enabling integration and synthesis across perspectives.

La modélisation participative, un lieu privilégié pour l’interdisciplinarité? / Participatory modeling: An ideal place for interdisciplinarity?

September 5, 2024April 7, 2016

By Pierre Bommel

An English version of this post is available

La modélisation participative cherche à impliquer un groupe de personnes dans la conception et la révision d’un modèle. L’objectif à terme consiste à mieux caractériser les problèmes actuels et imaginer collectivement comment tenter de les résoudre. Dans le domaine de l’environnement en particulier, il apparaît nécessaire que les acteurs concernés se sentent impliqués dans la démarche de modélisation, afin qu’ils puissent exprimer leurs propres points de vue, mais aussi pour mieux s’engager dans des décisions collectives. De ce fait, pour aborder la gestion intégrée des ressources, il est nécessaire de mettre les acteurs au centre des préoccupations de recherche, à la fois lors de la phase la conception du modèle mais aussi pour l’exploration de ces scénarios.

Facilitating participatory modeling

September 5, 2024March 17, 2016

By Rebecca Jordan

Facilitate: “To help (something) run more smoothly and effectively” (Merriam-Webster online dictionary).

Like many practices in life, there is an art and a science to facilitation. Certainly, best practices in facilitating processes within participatory modeling mirror many of those practices highlighted in guides to other participatory approaches. It is of critical importance that the expectations around the word “effective”, as taken from the definition above, are identified and negotiated. How can an individual or team of individuals help the process if expectations are unmatched?

Given that resources exist to encourage facilitation, the question that I struggle with is how is participatory modeling different? What does the addition of a model (i.e., an abstract representation) mean for facilitating participation? I argue that the benefits of using a model as a boundary object (i.e., a static representation that is jointly created but differently interpreted) about which stakeholders can discuss, are manifold.