Session 1.4

Sabine Hoffmann 1 & 2, Lisa Deutsch 1 & 3, Julie Thompson Klein 2 & 4, Michael O'Rourke 5 & 6

1 Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Switzerland; 2 TdLab, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland; 3 Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich, Switzerland; 4 Department of English, Wayne State University, USA; 5 MSU, Center for Interdisciplinarity, Michigan State University, USA; 6 Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, USA

The pressing environmental and societal challenges of our time require interdisciplinary research that crosses boundaries between different disciplines as well as transdisciplinary research that crosses boundaries between research, policy, and practice in order to formulate ‘socially robust’ responses to meet such challenges. Integration is widely regarded as the defining characteristic of inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) research. Given its importance, we call for establishing academic careers as ‘integration experts’. These are researchers specialized in leading, monitoring, assessing, accompanying, and/or advising others on integration within ITD projects or programs 1-3. In order to explore the careers of integration experts and the challenges they face in the current academic system, we organized a workshop at the ITD 2019 Conference ‘Joining forces for change’ in Gothenburg, Sweden, attended by 47 participants and 8 workshop organizers. The participants represented different disciplines and fields, different geographic regions, as well as different scientific communities. The latter included the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD Alliance), the International Network for the Science of Team Science (INSciTS), the Network for Integration and Implementation Science (i2S), and the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS). The workshop addressed four main questions 4:

1. What are integration experts and what are their roles?

2. What motivates integration experts to assume their roles?

3. What personal qualities and expertises do integration experts need to fulfill their roles?

4. What career challenges do integration experts face in academia?

In this pre-crafted video presentation, we present results from the discussion of these four questions. We use direct quotes from workshop participants to substantiate results and embed them in recent literature from the fields of ITD research as well as Science of Team Science (SciTS) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). Building on these results and our own experiences in leading and studying integration, we finally suggest three complementary ways to support the academic careers of integration experts:

1. Establishing an international Community of Practice (CoP) of integration experts under auspices of the ITD Alliance to foster peer-to-peer exchange among integration experts, to generate greater visibility and jointly develop ideas and steps forward on how to transform academic structures;

2. Studying the academic careers of integration experts to reveal their different careers paths, explicate their intellectural contributions to ITD projects and programs, and disclose differents ways of supporting such careers at individual and institutional level;

3. Entering in collaborative dialogue with funding agencies and home institutions to present and discuss results generated by the first and second suggestions and lessons learnt from other institutions on how to establish permanent academic research positions for integration experts.

The pre-crafted video presentation provides key insights for the conference stream of “Integrative TD” since it explores the careers of integration experts and the challenges they face in the current academic system.

References

1. Bammer, G. et al., Expertise in research integration and implementation for tackling complex problems: when is it needed, where can it be found and how can it be strengthened? Palgrave Communications 2020, 6, (1).

2. Pohl, C. et al., Conceptualising transdisciplinary integration as a multidimensional interactive process. Environmental Science & Policy 2021, 118, 18-26.

3. Rogga, S. et al., Opportunities, balancing acts, and challenges - doing PhDs in transdisciplinary research projects. Environmental Science & Policy 2021, 120, 138-144.

4. Hoffmann, S. et al., Integrate the Integrators! A call for establishing academic careers for integration experts. Humanities & Social Sciences Communications subm.