Cultural studies of collaborative science: disentangling interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cultures, practices and policies

Abstract

At the center of this thesis is an inquiry into how collaborative interdisciplinary research (IDR) and transdisciplinary research (TDR) can more effectively address scientific and societal challenges. Worldwide multidimensional crises urgently call for more collaborative research with the aim of transforming social reality. However, many factors still act as obstacles to high-impact research, resulting in deficiencies and disconnects between practice and policy. As a result, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are trapped in a pervasive contradiction between promotional rhetoric on the one hand and relatively inflexible institutional and funding reward systems on the other. This contradiction or gap needs to be fully elaborated to understand the political, societal, and economic values that underlie interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. My rationale is that there is an urgent need for an in-depth understanding of what it means to do interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, with their epistemic, cultural, social, and political implications for the science-policy interface. To approach this problem, I propose a research program on cultural studies of collaborative science, focusing on interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, to study the interconnections among i) those who study inter- and transdisciplinary cultures, ii) those who engage in IDR and TDR (practices) and iii) those who promote and fund IDR/TDR (policies). My research contributes to improving the responsiveness of inter- and transdisciplinarity to demands to address societal challenges. Three main areas structure my work to help advance the field and provide the foundations for this thesis, as follows: 1. By refining and expanding the theories and methods used to investigate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge cultures, I have advanced the theoretical and methodological foundations for investigating interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity as collaborative practices in research and teaching to leverage their impact. In this area, my research has focused on designing and testing new tools and frameworks to better investigate inter- and transdisciplinarity. 2. In terms of studying practices, modes, and spaces of inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration, my contributions to date comprise a thick description of problem spaces in different regions to examine what it means to do IDR and TDR, and how they are performed and where they take place. 3. In terms of contributing to current policy debates on the impacts of and funding for IDR and TDR, my research has created bridges to the funding and policy sectors by tracing intersections between practice and policy that lead to impactful IDR and TDR. This thesis comprises twelve scientific, peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, each constituting one chapter.