What is transdisciplinary research?
We define transdisciplinary research as solutions-oriented research that engages partners across disciplines and sectors to generate interdisciplinary knowledge to address critical societal challenges. A complex form of use-inspired research, transdisciplinary research seeks to generate integrated interdisciplinary knowledge and discovery through participatory and engaged practices that span across sectors and disciplines in a way that transcends traditional boundaries and directly contributes to resolving critical societal challenges. The approach seeks to develop salient solutions to critical challenges facing society with aims to produce both knowledge and action.
What is the difference between “interdisciplinary” and “transdisciplinary”?
“Interdisciplinary” research draws from and contributes to knowledge across disciplines. More than the sum of disciplinary parts, it includes intentional steps to integrate knowledge across disciplines. Interdisciplinary can generate new disciplines. “Transdisciplinary” research works across disciplines and sectors so that interdisciplinary knowledge may breach the boundary between science and society. Both approaches require considerable collaboration, communication, flexibility, and reframing.
What are other names for “transdisciplinary” research?
There are several movements within the research enterprise that attempt to capture and promote the value of transdisciplinary work. Each has a different emphasis, all aim to harness interdisciplinarity and co-development across sectors to generate solutions that improve social, health, economic, and environmental conditions.
- Convergence – synthesis and improving research infrastructure (NSF)
- Team Science – practices of relationship and collaboration (NIH)
- Public Impact Research – institutional commitments & structures to support research impacts
- Highly Integrative Basic and Responsive – the practices and methods of use-inspired basic research
- Grand Challenges – aims to drive discovery, innovation, and engagement by identifying institutional “north stars”
- Use-Inspired - a term favored by the NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships to indicate research is purposeful for a user group, to be coupled with “translational research” which includes activities to make purposeful research translated for action.
What does this mean for OSU?
The Division of Research and Innovation is growing capacity for strategic research development with a focus on supporting faculty to pursue large-scale transdisciplinary grants and subsequently build flagship OSU research enterprises aligned with Prosperity Widely Shared: The Oregon State Plan. Support for scaling-up is not limited to transdisciplinary work and includes interdisciplinary, and highly disciplinary collaborative work.
Where can I find more information?
Hall, K. L., Vogel, A. L., Huang, G. C., Serrano, K. J., Rice, E. L., Tsakraklides, S. P., & Fiore, S. M. (2018). The science of team science: A review of the empirical evidence and research gaps on collaboration in science. American psychologist, 73(4), 532.
Lam, D. P., Freund, M. E., Kny, J., Marg, O., Mbah, M., Theiler, L., ... & Schäfer, M. (2021). Transdisciplinary research: towards an integrative perspective. GAIA-Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 30(4), 243-249.
NRC (National Research Council). (2014). Convergence: Facilitating Transdisciplinary Integration of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Beyond. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Pohl, C., Klein, J. T., Hoffmann, S., Mitchell, C., & Fam, D. (2021). Conceptualizing transdisciplinary integration as a multidimensional interactive process. Environmental Science & Policy, 118, 18-26.
Ramaley, J. A. (2017, November 27). Communicating and Collaborating Across Disciplines. Retrieved from https://ascnhighered.org/ASCN/posts/192300.html.
Rigolot, C. (2020). Transdisciplinarity as a discipline and a way of being: complementarities and creative tensions. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 7(1), 1-5.
The image below is a schematic representation of transdisciplinary research sourced from Utrect Universit’s Transdisciplinary Field Guide
J. Risien OSU Division of Research and Innovation 20-Feb-2024