From knowledge co-production to transdisciplinary research: Lessons from the quest to produce socially robust knowledge

Abstract

During the past decades, a variety of approaches have emerged to understand and explain transformation processes at the science-society interface. Under different labels, these concepts have propagated a shift from academic, investigator-initiated, discipline-based research to more context-driven, problem-focused, and multidisciplinary research. These approaches provide the core motivational background for specific transdisciplinary initiatives. This article provides an overview of the different understandings and divergent styles of transdisciplinary research, its multifaceted dimensions, pathways, and challenges. Practical examples illustrate the emergence of approaches and programs in response to new intellectual and pragmatic developments. It is concluded that transdisciplinarity gathers heterogeneous sets of relationships between epistemic ends and epistemic means. The authors recommend paying more attention to the qualities necessary for an understanding of practical knowledge that enable knowledge realization, and the abilities that make the implementation of findings possible. It is believed that the need for openness, flexibility, and attention to the diversity and uncertainty in knowledge will inspire further democratic ways to re-organize the science-society nexus.