Structuring Design & Evaluation in Transdisciplinarity for Transformation

Abstract

AbstractWhile transdisciplinary knowledge production is increasingly gaining traction in academic and policy environments, initiating and guiding such approaches is not straightforward and comes with challenges. These challenges concern, among other things, methodological and practical difficulties that arise in the ‘fuzzy reality’ of doing transdisciplinary research. In this chapter, we elaborate on the different ways that the literature has dealt with design and evaluation of transdisciplinarity. We highlight a number of challenges in applying frameworks in the ‘real’ fuzzy work of transdisciplinary, look into three ideal-typical conceptualizations of transdisciplinary research and propose a number of ‘non-negotiables’ in doing design and evaluation.