1st Edition
Transdisciplinary Research and Sustainability Collaboration, Innovation and Transformation
Transdisciplinarity is a new way of scientifically meeting the challenges of sustainability. Indeed, interdisciplinary collaboration and co-operation with non-academic ‘practice partners’ is at the core of this; creating contextualised, socially relevant knowledge about complex real-world problems.
Transdisciplinary Research and Sustainability breaks new ground by presenting transdisciplinary research in practice, drawing on recent advances by the vibrant transdisciplinary research communities in the German-speaking world. It describes methodological innovations developed to address wide-ranging contemporary issues including climate change adaptation, energy policy, sustainable agriculture and soil conservation. Furthermore, the authors reflect on the challenges involved in integrating non-academic actors in scientific research, on the tensions that arise in the encounter of theory and praxis, and on the inherently normative, political nature of sustainability research.
Highlighting the need for academic institutions to be transformed to reflect transdisciplinarity, this timely volume will appeal to postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as Sustainability Science, Transdisciplinary Studies and Philosophy of Science.
Preface: Bernhard Gläser & Heike Egner, series editors
Foreword by the editor: Martina Padmanabhan
Introduction: Transdisciplinarity for sustainability
Martina Padmanabhan
Section 1: Understanding sustainability science as challenge and necessity
A transdisciplinary approach to the process of socio-technical transformation: the case of German ‘Energiewende’
Armin Grunwald
Real-world laboratories as an institutionalisation of the new social contract between science and society
Mandy Singer-Brodowski & Matthias Wanner & Uwe Schneidewind
Transdisciplinarity in social-ecological research: Constraints, challenges and opportunities. Reflections on personal experience
Sabine Hofmeister
Section 2: Cooperating with partners of practice
From the plurality of transdisciplinarity to concrete transdisciplinary methods. The case of PoNa and its dialogue with practitioners on a picture discourse analysis.
Daniela Gottschlich & Jedrzej Sulmowski
Social learning videos: A method for successful collaboration between science and practice
Patricia Fry
Developing landscape scenarios and identifying local management options:
Outcomes and evaluation of a participatory approach in the Swabian Alb, Germany
Claudia Bieling, Holger Gerdes, Bettina Ohnesorge, Tobias Plieninger, Harald Schaich, Christian Schleyer, Kathrin Trommler & Franziska Wolff
Section 3: Pursuing methodological innovations for transdisciplinarity
This is the case (study) - so what? Reflections on a constitutive tension in sustainability science
Rafael Ziegler
Biography
Martina Padmanabhan is W3 Chair of Comparative Development and Cultural Studies - Southeast Asia, University of Passau, Germany
Sustainability can neither be understood nor realized without transdisciplinarity. In this collection of outstanding contribution by a stellar cast of international scholars and practitioners, Dr. Padmanabhan brilliantly demonstrates how sustainability science researchers and practitioners can speak to and learn from each other. This model of integrative work will prove to be of lasting and immense value.
Arun Agrawal is a Professor at the School of Natural Resources & Environment at the University of Michigan, USA
Co-design, co-production and co-dissemination are often applied in transdisciplinary research, but still lacks methodological clarity in practise. The volume offers outstanding research from German speaking countries that can further elucidate the implementation of these concepts. It clearly demonstrates that power, gender and culture must be considered carefully to establish transdisciplinarity as emancipatory force."
Christoph Görg, Professor of Social Ecology, Alpen-Adria Universtät Wien, Austria
