The challenging role of researchers coping with tensions, dilemmas and paradoxes in transdisciplinary settings

Abstract

Transdisciplinary learning is a response to address the comprehensive sustainability competencies for implementing the 17 sustainability goals of the Agenda 2030. Transdisciplinary contexts include socially distributed knowledge beyond scientific boundaries. This impacts the whole design process and specific tasks and roles of the researchers. Addressing the questions, “Which typical tensions, dilemmas and paradoxes need to be faced by researches in transdisciplinary settings?”, and “How does the role of the researchers change and goes beyond traditional research settings when operating in transdisciplinary settings surrounded by tensions, dilemmas and paradoxes?”, answers will be provided following existing analytical frameworks of transdisciplinary research design. Based on own experiences with and including observations of transdisciplinary settings at academia, transdisciplinary research and lecture settings will be analysed and compared by transdisciplinary criteria. Results show, in transdisciplinary settings, researchers or lecturers are more engaged with addressing poly‐contextuality, the consciousness of the innovation paradoxes and the side‐effects of ongoing interdependences. They take up multiple roles and have to deal with role ambiguity. Transdisciplinary lecture settings are even more demanding as they also have to meet the mentor role or maintain the students' learning progress.

Doing epistemic justice in sustainable development: Applying the philosophical concept of epistemic injustice to the real world

“…Transdisciplinary research has four pivotal characteristics: it aims to resolve real world problems, such as sustainable development; it integrates various academic disciplines and actors, including non‐academic actors; it aims to facilitate cooperation and mutual learning of all actors; and, in this process, it produces new societal and scientific knowledge (Arnold, 2022). In the production of new societal and scientific knowledge, it includes a knowledge making approach that aims to transcend disciplinary knowledge boundaries, legitimizing the equal participation of different types of stakeholders (Biswas & Miller, 2022).…”

“…Scholars are increasing recognizing that the different knowledge systems and power differentials between stakeholders can disrupt the process of transdisciplinary research. For example, Arnold argues that interactions between stakeholders are often described as cooperative, collaborative and showing values of equality while, in reality, ‘… scarcity, uncertainty, urgency, rule, power or dominance, and change or transition influence cooperation, mutual interaction and knowledge outcome’ (Arnold, 2022, p. 30). Processes which bring together participants from the Global North and Global South face the biggest challenges (Hermans et al, 2022), probably because this is where power differentials are the greatest.…”

What Is It Like to Make a Prototype? Practitioner Reflections on the Intersection of User Experience and Digital Humanities/Social Sciences during the Design and Delivery of the “Getting to Mount Resilience” Prototype

“…If I were to participate in another UX design and delivery project, I would advocate for a more structured intellectual-and emotional-engagement process that features dedicated space and time to engage with these issues and address feelings of uncertainty. The personal uncertainty I felt in working with human-centred design methods has close parallels to some of the intellectual frictions present in how interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary sciences are developed [48][49][50], where scientists involved in creating innovative forms of sciences felt torn between a desire to participate and their existing personal and institutional perspectives [48]. In this research, significant thought was given to building the competencies necessary to develop transdisciplinary knowledge and, therefore, the intellectual security necessary to work productively in this space [51].…”

Research−implementation organisations and their role for sustainable development

“…There are, for example, demands to explore ways of decreasing the high transaction costs that come with a complex arrangement of partners that represent different cultures, disciplines and sectors (Brown et al, 2015). Other lingering issues are the tensions that arise from different agendas, values and stakes, insufficient funding and lack of practical guidance for collaboration (Arnold, 2022; Wardani et al, 2022). However, perhaps the largest problem of all is the pace of adaptation (or lack thereof) in academic research that is still predominantly mono‐disciplinary, shaping respective careers (OECD, 2020a; Wardani et al, 2022).…”