Enabling Early Career Sustainability Researchers to Conduct Transdisciplinary Research: Insights from Austria

Abstract

Human influences on Earth's natural systems are accelerating, with anthropogenic climate and global change posing existential risks for mankind. To overcome the policy implementation gap in practice both collective and transformative actions for sustainability involving science, policy and society are urgently needed. In the realms of science, this relates to taking inter-and transdisciplinary research approaches to foster exchange and co-designing policy options between researcher, decision-makers and other societal stakeholders; however, such collaboration is often limited by time, funding and complexity constrains. This paper recognises that particularly early career climate change and sustainability researchers are exposed to both the claim for and practical challenges of inter-and transdisciplinarity. For a first qualitative investigation of Austrian early career researchers' preparedness for conducting participatory research with societal stakeholders, this study examines perspectives of twelve early career researchers participating in a young scientists' workshop. Using a pre-post survey and analysing data by content, our findings indicate that workshop participants have to manage stakeholder processes directly after graduation and, due to a lack of methodological training, only use a small fraction of existing social science methods and participatory settings for stakeholder collaboration. To support other early career researchers and future students in Austria in developing strong inter-and transdisciplinary research skills, we highlight the added-value of integrating hands-on workshops with societal stakeholders, regular exchange of lessons learned and transdisciplinary lectures into university education. Offering more practice-oriented transdisciplinary learning activities during undergraduate education, like excursions and mini-projects in which students can develop and train participatory methods together with stakeholders under guidance, is believed to be a fruitful strategy in this context.

Science with society: Challenges of early‐stage researchers engaging with transdisciplinary research in sustainability science

“…Such “TD readiness” development involves training covering TD orientation, critical reflection, dialog, multi‐level theoretical architecture, methodological pluralism and team science skills (see Kemp & Nurius, 2015). Similarly, Schrot et al (2020) found a lack of training causes TD ESRs to use only a small set of existing tools and methods. They recommend lectures on participatory approaches, excursions, hand‐on courses, TD mini‐projects and toolkits, and even introducing TD elements in the master's studies.…”

Sustainability and its challenges in destinations that highly depend on tourism: a thematic literature review

“…To overcome the policy implementation gap in practice, collaborative and transformational initiatives for sustainability must be undertaken in alignment with scientific development and societal needs. In the realms of science, this relates to taking inter-and transdisciplinary research approaches to foster exchange and the co-design of policy options between researchers, decision-makers and other societal stakeholders (Schrot et al, 2020). The European Environment Agency states that many of the principles of sustainable tourism development are strongly linked with the prudent use of environmental resources (European Environment Agency, 2003).…”

Disentangling Obstacles to Knowledge Co-Production for Early-Career Researchers in the Marine Sciences

“…These include structural issues of academic systems, practice orientation vs. scientific excellence, high workload and time pressure, as well as limited access to (knowledge) networks for turning research into action (Deininger et al, 2021;Rogga and Zscheischler, 2021). These challenges are amplified for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) due to common limitations in terms offunding, time, experience, and networks (e.g., Felt et al, 2013;Haider et al, 2018;Fam et al, 2020;Schrot et al, 2020). Thus, identifying and addressing obstacles to knowledge coproduction, especially from the perspective of ECRs, may help to better support the generation of co-produced knowledge and ultimately the utility of science for society.…”