Building capacities for transdisciplinary research

Challenges and recommendations for early-career researchers

authored by

Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Johanna Kramm, Marco Sonnberger, Carolin Völker, Christian Albert, Antonia Graf, Kathleen Hermans, Steffen Lange, Tilman Santarius, Barbara Schröter, Stefanie Sievers-Glotzbach, Janis Winzer

Abstract

While transdisciplinarity offers a way to tackle complex social-ecological challenges, transdisciplinary research is a challenging task in itself. The integration of research methods across academic disciplines, the collaboration between researchers and practitioners, and the need to balance societal and disciplinary academic impacts pose many difficulties even to experienced applied scientists and even more so to early-career researchers. Young scholars face particular problems, given their lack of longer-term experience and their still fragile position within academia. Drawing on existing literature, an early-career researcher workshop, and our own experience as junior research group leaders, we discuss specific challenges and respective solution strategies of transdisciplinary research within the context of sustainability.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Environmental Planning

External Organisation(s)

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)
University of Stuttgart
University of Münster
Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health
Technische Universität Berlin
Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF)
Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM)
Institute for Environmental Economics Research (IÖW)
Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE)

Type

Article

Journal

GAIA

Volume

27

Pages

379-386

No. of pages

8

ISSN

0940-5550

Publication date

01.01.2018

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Environmental Science (miscellaneous), Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.27.4.10 (Access: Open)
https://doi.org/10.15488/4743 (Access: Open)