Transdisciplinary research: When science and society shape the future together

Energy transition, transport transition, climate change mitigation, resource savings and sustainable consumption patterns – the challenges are major, the problems complex, the actors and stakeholders diverse. In response, and starting in the environmental and sustainability realms, new forms of knowledge production have been developing since the 1990s, marking a departure from the classic forms of single-discipline scientific research. Moreover, they go beyond interdisciplinary research, which moves across the boundaries between the scientific disciplines. In transdisciplinary research, actors in both science and society work closely together.

Transdisciplinarity involves various sectors of society, seeking to mobilise their very specific forms of knowledge generated by everyday practical experience. New knowledge coalitions can thus emerge that are better able to cope with the challenges facing society. Collaborative – indeed communal – activities by academia, civil society, policy-makers, industry and state and non-state institutions are at the forefront.

In this process, science takes up impulses from stakeholders and builds upon them, while simultaneously transmitting its own impulses to practitioners. Thus, ideally, transdisciplinary and transformative processes have effects upon both science and practice, initiating change in both areas. Close linkage between the scientific and social systems is a hallmark of transdisciplinary research; reciprocal learning processes stimulate and facilitate change.