Network for Transdisciplinary Research td-net

Our contribution to address complex societal challenges: We link scientific communities, support transdisciplinary careers and promote the development of competencies and methods. More

What counts for transferability of knowledge across cases in transdisciplinary research?

Carolina Adler 1 & 2 & 4, Gabriela Wülser 1, Christian Pohl 1, Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn 3, Thomas Breu 4, Urs Wiesmann 4

1 USYS TdLab, Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich; 2 Mountain Research Initiative, University of Bern, Switzerland; 3 Environmental Philosophy Group, Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zurich; 4 Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland

 

In transdisciplinary research, researchers work with actors from civil society, the public, and the private sectors. Together they investigate a socially relevant problem in a concrete case. On the one hand, it is important to learn from each of these cases in their unique context. On the other hand, however, it is unclear under what conditions the knowledge gained from a specific case on a given problem can be transferred to another case. In this study, we investigate how researchers and stakeholders think about this transferability of knowledge.

First, we asked if considerations for knowledge transfer are present, and if so, which specific findings or research outcomes are considered transferable by researchers and stakeholders involved in the project. To empirically examine what knowledge is considered transferrable to other cases, 30 respondents from academia and practice in 12 Swiss-based transdisciplinary research (TDR) projects were interviewed. the transferable knowledge we found can be classified into seven classes: 1) transdisciplinary principles, 2) transdisciplinary approaches, 3) systematic procedures, 4) product formats, 5) experiential know-how, 6) framings, and 7) insights, data and information. Second, the same respondents were asked to reflect on key considerations for why, or on which basis, would certain knowledge be deemed transferable. Responses generally clustered around three key categories: 1) Pre-conditions: reflecting on expected outcomes and outputs, a certain set of conditions need to be met to justify a potential for transferability; 2) Arguments by analogy: to what extent are cases comparable on similar or relevant aspects, with sufficient similarities to justify a hypothesis that it could work in the new context; and 3) Procedural aspects: whereby a process for application accounts for the necessary conditions that need to be met at the target case for an application to bring the expected results or outcomes to fruition. In this last category, a key question to reflect upon is how to lead and organise a meaningful process for transfer as an outcome of co-production.

Overall, we find that deliberations on TDR have predominantly focused on transdisciplinary principles and approaches. However, for knowledge co-production in TDR beyond an unmanageable field of case studies, more efforts in developing and critically discussing transferable knowledge of the other classes are needed, foremost systematic procedures, product formats, and framings. This is not only an imperative to supporting the value and quality of TDR in and of itself but also to help structure and enhance the scaling potential of solutions that necessarily seek to address problems of societal relevance in context.

Toolkitting on the Intersection of Creative Humanities and Scholarship of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning

Iris van der Tuin

Utrecht University, Netherlands

 

Toolkitting is popular and particularly so in relation to the 21st century skills of creative thinking and collaboration. Academics use toolkits in order to structure and enhance multi- and interdisciplinary research collaboration either amongst academics or between academics, professional experts, and the wider public. Such collaboration often has the goal of finding unconventional solutions to complex ongoing problems, a goal that only comes within reach when there is common ground amongst the participants. This contribution discusses two projects that build toolkits for exploratory and integrative group work: Creative Urban Methods (CRUM), a project of a group of scholars from the Humanities, Anthropology, and Social Geography at Utrecht University; and the Glossary Project, set up by Creative Humanities Academy (CHA) of the same university. The two projects are unique in that they are situated on the intersection of "Creative Humanities" and the Scholarship of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning (SoITL). Creative Humanities is an approach that sees Humanities thinking as a form of making (so it does not just research artists' making). SoITL, focused as it is on thinking and doing, provides situated and hands-on research methods, as well as pedagogies and didactics for "common grounding." In this contribution, toolkits will be discussed that have been tested on the intersection between academia and the field of arts and culture. Toolkits have the capacity of both fostering creativity and attracting creative minds. How do Humanities scholars and Arts and Culture professionals feed into, and feed, this process? What is specific about integrating the arts as both a practice and a field for reflection in the context of existing toolkits? Today, Arts and Culture professionals, as well as citizens in general deal with an abundance of unstructured or even contradictory knowledge, information, and exchange in our "algorithmic condition" (Colman et al. 2018). The toolkits of CRUM and CHA are helpful in that they pre-determine ways of working through the sheer abundance of concepts, neologisms, and data. Ultimately, they lead users to making an informed selection of relevant theoretical, textual, and/or visual material for a particular context or project. Concrete examples are, first, the "Concept Randomizer" of CHA that helps participants work with a random selection of concepts from Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities (Van der Tuin and Verhoeff Forthcoming/2021) for which a common ground as well as a demonstration of use (a "mobilization", as we call it) must be developed. Second, examples are a set of workshops connected to several types of creative methods (performative methods, mapping methods, and making methods) that share a perspective toward spatiotemporal and relational structures of urban environments, dynamics of change, and forms of mobility, and have a phenomenological emphasis on embodied experiences of the (academic/expert/citizen) researcher or participant. These workshops pertain to walking-thinking workshops and neighborhood explorations of, for instance, data infrastructures. The contribution will focus on toolkitting per se as a form of procedural thinking, making, and doing; on the necessity to be specific about the role of the Humanities in the burgeoning toolkitting landscape (think of TD-net's and ShapeID's meta-toolkits); and on the toolkits that both CRUM and CHA have experimented with and with what results.

 

Literature

Towards an inter and transdisciplinary agenda to study sustainable territorial transitions

Marco Billi 1 & 2, Julio Labraña 2, Catalina Amigo 2, Anahí Urquiza 1 & 2, Nicolás Vergara 2, Roxana Bórquez 1 & 2

1 Center for Climate and Resilience Research - (CR)2, Chile; 2 Nucleus in Systemic Transdisciplinary Studies (NEST-R3, Chile)

 

The study of transitions is inherently interdisciplinary. Moreover, there is a need to advance towards a more integrated framework to portray how multiple co-occurring changes may interact, superimpose or influence one another, and how these changes manifest in different environmental and societal contexts, affecting societal actors differently.

To answer this challenge, this contribution aims to set the conceptual basis for an integrated, inter- and transdisciplinary analytical framework to investigate sustainable territorial transition processes.

 

In particular, it will discuss:

a) the potential for the concept of sustainable territorial transitions to foster a fruitful collaboration among several disciplinary and analytical approaches, including those related to resilience, polycentric governance, territorial metabolism, nature-based solutions, socio-technical transition management, among others

b) possible strategies to build socially robust, collectively validated, and transferrable research on sustainable territorial transitions, particularly stressing the opportunities and challenges associated to the participatory modelling and projection of territorial transitions

c) a preliminary design for an inter and transdisciplinary research initiative in Chile to exemplify these reflections. Chile is a natural laboratory for the study of sustainable territorial transitions, considering its high territorial heterogeneity, the accelerated changes it has been enduring in the last decades, the unique transformative scenario brought forward by the current constitutional process.

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