Organizing Research on "Grand Challenges": Transdisciplinary Approaches

Graduate School Seminar Series: Collaborative Leadership & Grand Challenges Research

Transdisciplinary research (TR) is a promising path to more effective management of complex ‘grand challenge’ problems. We define TR as an integrated process of inquiry and action that addresses complex problems by integrating scholarly and practical knowledge across many societal sectors and levels of organization. Furthermore, TR features democratic and iterative processes of decision-making and collective action that aims to align the interests, viewpoints and agendas of a wide range of societal sectors In practice, TR can be undertaken as a cyclic process of (i) initial problem formulation, (ii) ‘broadening’ of the problem formulation and recruitment of participants across societal sectors (iii) deliberation, negotiation and design of an action agenda for systemic change, (iv) implementation action, (v) monitoring and assessment of outcomes and (vi) reformulation of the problem. In this seminar, we will examine and discuss the TR framework, and consider its application in practice, with a particular emphasis on the role of humanistic disciplines and democratic governance in TR.

Presenter:
Nick Jordan; Professor, Agronomy and Plant Genetics; College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences