Td Seminar

Transdisciplinary Research: Challenges of Interdisciplinarity and Stakeholder Engagement

The "Td Seminar" is designed for PhD students and PostDoc researchers involved in inter- or transdisciplinary research. It addresses and discusses challenges of this kind of research using scientific literature presenting case studies, concepts, theories, methods and by testing practical tools. It concludes with a 10-step approach to make participants' research projects more societally relevant.

Throughout the whole course, scientific literature will be read and discussed as well as practical tools explored in class to address concrete challenges.

Learning objective for the Td Seminar

Participants know specific challenges of inter- and transdisciplinary research and can address them by applying practical tools.

They can tackle questions like: how to integrate knowledge from different disciplines, how to engage with societal actors, how to secure broader impact of research? They learn to critically reflect their own research project in its societal context and on their role as scientists.

Content

The seminar covers the following topics:

1. Theories and concepts of inter- and transdisciplinary research
   
2. The specific challenges of inter- and transdisciplinary research
   
3. Collaborating between different disciplines
   
4. Engaging with stakeholders
   
5. 10 steps to make participants' research projects more societally relevant

The following open access article builds a core element of the course:

Pohl, C., Krütli, P., & Stauffacher, M. (2017). Ten Reflective Steps for Rendering Research Societally Relevant. GAIA 26(1), 43-51 doi: external page10.14512/gaia.26.1.10call_made

Further, external pagethis collection of toolscall_made will be used.

More details and registration at the course catalogue of ETH.