INTERSECTIONS
Investigating Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity: Intersections of Practices, Culture(s) and Policy in Collaborative Knowledge Production (INTERSECTIONS)
Overview
Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research (IDR and TDR) – collaborative research spanning methods, approaches, disciplines, and societal spheres – is trapped in a paradox. On the one hand, IDR and TDR promise to catalyse societal transformation and tackle societal challenges. This approach is therefore heavily promoted by universities, funders, and policy members. On the other hand, IDR and TDR face a range of barriers on an institutional, societal, and individual level.
One way through this impasse is to understand the multiple intersections that exist between cultures (knowledge), practices (researchers), and policy (institutions) in interdisciplinarity (ID) and transdisciplinarity (TD) to improve their capacity to address scientific and societal challenges.
ID and TD have been studied and theorised differently across different scientific communities. The various approaches have developed into different cultures of ID/TD. In some traditions, TD is characterised as problem-solving research focusing on sustainability issues, while other perspectives see its purpose in transcending boundaries of disciplines and synthesising methods and theories to address a unifying epistemological issue.
One aim of the INTERSECTIONS project is therefore to identify different approaches to ID and TD and characterise the distinctions between them.
The consolidation of the research on and the conceptual cultures of ID and TD is an important foundation for producing high-quality knowledge that leads to an increased understanding of collaborative research practices and how they contribute to tackling societal challenges. Knowledge cultures of ID/TD and practices of IDR/TDR therefore intersect and mutually influence each other. In addition to the theoretical conceptualisation, a solid methodological foundation is needed to investigate IDR/TDR practices.
The project, therefore, aims to advance the methodological and conceptual approaches for investigating and evaluating interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and the factors that support or hinder its success.
Understanding interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary practices will moreover inform us about disconnections between the research and the environment it takes place in. Part of this environment are related bodies of policy, funding agencies, and related infrastructure. One well-known pitfall of inter- and transdisciplinary research projects is that they tend to take more time. Understanding this temporal aspect of inter- and transdisciplinary research could be a first step for funding programs to be adapted to and allow for higher quality in ID and TD.
We aim to contribute to an improvement of the collaborations at the intersections of research and policy by identifying potential disconnections that keep interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research from developing their full potential in addressing societal challenges.
Due to the current lack of a unified understanding and approach to ID/TD the wheel is continuously reinvented when it comes to ID and TD. This is not only the case for the academic realm, but also for the policy sphere. The differing conceptualisations and cultures of ID and TD within academia, within policy, and between academia and policy have led to misunderstandings that create adverse consequences. Many funding and evaluation structures show the need for improved communication between research and policy.
Approach and Methods
This project is situated in the fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Cultural Studies of Science. This is represented by the methods employed, the questions studied as well as by the scientific community we target.
To investigate the sketched field, we will employ a combination of qualitative methods. In a first step, we conduct an extensive review of the literature on ID and TD. This will allow us to consolidate the theoretical approaches on ID and TD and lay the theoretical foundation for the empirical investigation. The complex search strings used to query Web of Science and Scopus, as well as the consolidated database of relevant literature resulting from this search and the subsequent selection process have been published as dataset/data in the ETH Research Collection in September 2023.
We will then conduct interviews and focus groups with members of both academia and policy. This will inform us about the currently circulating understandings of ID and TD in Switzerland and Europe.
Subsequently, we will conduct ethnographic fieldwork in three research centres in Switzerland that have agreed to collaborate with our research group. These explorations will provide insight into collaborative research practices and relevant influencing factors. Overall, we follow an approach of problematisation, aiming to challenge and defamiliarise existing preconceptions of ID and TD.
Outcome
By understanding the multiple intersections that exist between cultures, practices, and policy in ID/TD we envision creating the following outcomes:
- Enable the consolidation of a research program for investigating ID/TD by refining and expanding the theories and methods used for investigating interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge cultures.
- Enhance our understanding of the rapidly changing conditions for collaborative academic work.
- Contribute to policies for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and education that are grounded in aggregated evidence from different fields.
- Contribute to current policy debates around the impacts of and funding of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in Switzerland and beyond.
Doctoral Theses
We currently have two doctoral students working in the INTERSECTIONS project.
Underlying values in collaborative research practices and their evaluation – an empirical inquiry into resulting connections and disconnections
Doctoral candidate: Anne-Sophie Schaltegger
Timeframe: February 2022 – January 2026
Abstract: Inter- and transdisciplinary research are facing the paradox of being promoted for their transformative potential on the one hand, and facing a range of barriers on the other. One of those barriers is research evaluation, which often does not account for the unique conditions and characteristics of inter- and transdisciplinary research. These evaluation mechanisms and their effects on inter- and transdisciplinary research practices and their impact are still poorly understood. Values play an important role in research and its evaluation. But empirical investigations into those values, their roles and how the values of research and its evaluation relate to each other are scarce, especially in relation to the specific situation in Switzerland. My thesis will contribute to closing this gap by applying a qualitative, cultural approach and a mixed methodology leading up a grounded theory. The research questions guiding my research focus on the values involved in collaborative inter- and transdisciplinary research practices, the values involved in their evaluation as well as the intersections and disconnections between those two value systems. An initial literature review will inform about the existing research on values in inter- and transdisciplinary research and about prevailing values in related grey literature. Via ethnographic research in relevant national research projects, mixed with cognitive methods, values engaged in collaborative research practices in Switzerland will be investigated. These will be contrasted with a perspective on values engaged in related evaluation mechanisms through interviews and focus groups with representatives of the evaluation sphere. A final synthesis will result in a grounded theory that illuminates the intersections and disconnections between inter- and transdisciplinary research and its evaluation, aiding in detecting how this intersection can be improved to foster these research mode’s potential from a perspective of values.
Project core team
-
PD Dr Bianca Vienni-Baptista, group lead -
Anne-Sophie Schaltegger, doctoral candidate
-
Helena Winiger, doctoral student -
Funding
"Investigating interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity: intersections of practices, culture(s) and policy in collaborative knowledge production" (Intersections) is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), external pageProgramme PRIMA, Grant No. 201582, period 2022–2026.
