Understanding how institutions may support the development of transdisciplinary approaches to sustainability research

Challenges associated with involving private, public and community-based stakeholders in research

While there has been significant momentum for private, public and community-based stakeholders to be involved in research in relation to sustainability and climate change in recent times, this is not a new concept (Odum and Barrett, 1971):

although it’s not as new as you might think, this has been around for decades, but what is new is the current drive to have elements of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary across most of the research. (IP3)

Well established interactive research practices with long traditions of methods, practices and empirical research are often crowded out by ‘the jargon of co-production’ (Mach et al., 2020: 31). These approaches are not new, but rather there is a new and growing emphasis placed upon them. This creates an issue whereby researchers with no previous experience of these practices or traditions undertake these new roles without recognising this existing knowledge:

you want to bring in other disciplines, but then I suppose you want there to be enough people within a project who understand how this knowledge making works or else you have people reinventing the wheel and suggesting the collaborative community engagement work is some brand new radical type of thing, which it isn’t, it has been around a long time. (IP10)

Moreover, there is the question of the variety of different roles that researchers must be prepared to fill, which is well documented in the literature (Pohl et al., 2010; Wittmayer and Schäpke, 2014). An additional point that must be acknowledged is that some people will be more suited to the role than others: ‘There is something that no one ever says. The importance of being a nice person is key’ (IP6). Many of the necessary skills for engaging with a range of people are ‘soft’ interpersonal traits that cannot be developed with conventional training.

It has been claimed that through working with researchers, other stakeholders are ‘rewarded with new knowledge, capacities, and “voice” by taking part in research networks’ (Klenk and Meehan, 2015: 743). There is a danger, however, in starting from an assumed position that beneficial outcomes will be achieved simply through the engagement process. This evidence may be influenced by the form of practice being implemented on the ground, whereby a tick-box logic is applied to stakeholder engagement. Several participants noted that often within projects working across a number of disciplines, the social science elements (or engagement of stakeholders more generally) is added on to the physical sciences or engineering, rather than being itself embedded within the core of the research process. The risk is that under pressure to work with private, public and community-based stakeholders, these tokenistic inclusions may take place:

a project I was involved in previously which had stakeholder engagement aspects … it was lip service … it was just that we have a report on social acceptance here it is, grand, that is that box ticked. (IP2)

Evaluation of public engagement activities is thus increasingly important (Reed et al., 2018).

All parties involved must be clear about the purpose of working in this manner. It was noted that there is a requirement for funding to enable stakeholders and researchers time to build trust and solidarity (Lemos et al., 2018):

You really try and establish that you are not there with a big agenda to extract information. You are there to show a sense of solidarity as much as anything else, and then bit by bit you entrust. (IP7)

This, however, is something currently not facilitated through typical two- or three-year project time frames, with tight delivery deadlines and narrowly defined goals.

Challenges inherent to higher education institutions

First, the issue of communication between actors is of crucial importance. Coming from different disciplinary backgrounds or professional settings results in many linguistic styles of specialisation (Jahn et al., 2012). It can become a difficult challenge to communicate complex findings using simple language (Tress et al., 2005). The tension between different knowledge types, technical expertise and organisation structures (Jahn, 2008), as well as within this language, represents one of the core challenges for research moving from disciplinary to transdisciplinary (Jahn et al., 2012; Kantamneni et al., 2019).

In the words of Saviano et al. (2019: 1551), despite the growing importance being placed upon transdisciplinarity, ‘science has continued to follow a vertical pathway through the development of increasingly specialized knowledge, thus generating fragmentation and divides that make dialogue among disciplines difficult’. Alongside this, often the proxy variables used in the evaluation of research practices do not include elements related to transdisciplinary approaches (Mårtensson et al., 2016). The time required to coordinate meaningful stakeholder engagement is severely underappreciated. Related to this, it was suggested that ‘what happens often is that the social science component is bolted on’ (IP10). Beyond how knowledge is integrated, and in relation to the definition of roles, time (Polk, 2015) and levels of commitment (Boon et al., 2014) become important considerations. As noted:

one of the things is that people don’t understand the time it takes to do this work, and the fact you have to develop relationships with people and you have to understand what they want. (IP6)

Researchers must balance the tension between levels of commitment from societal actors, the necessity of producing findings that are practical to these actors, and the need for research outputs.

Working in a team that includes a range of different actors, coming from different institutions/organisations, may prove a challenge due to the differing performance expectations and goals within those institutions/organisations (Boon et al., 2014). The transdisciplinary team becomes its own entity, but one in which different actors must meet very different performance indicators. Within an academic setting, the importance recently placed upon transdisciplinary approaches to managing complex issues is still at odds with the structural expectations created within academia:

when it comes to your own personal career, it doesn’t really provide … academic outputs will suffer if you are doing this kind of engaged research properly, so I think that has to be reflected. In some respects, people look down … I am not saying that happens across the board … but it is considered lesser possibly than academic research, which I would very much argue against. (IP6)

Importantly, as Lauto and Sengoku (2015) note in relation to barriers to TdR within universities, career advancement opportunities remain more focused upon singular disciplinary approaches, due to the historical development of disciplinary traditions throughout the twentieth century. As noted in an interview:

essentially the currency is journal publications … yes, there are lots of scholars that do this kind of work and are held in high esteem, but you need to be publishing journal papers. (IP10)

This lack of recognition for TdR in career progression was reflected in the degree of ease with which participants could pursue this approach. There was a clear distinction between permanent teaching posts, with the freedom to explore interests, and earlier stage researchers, who lacked this certainty and security. As noted by a permanent senior staff member:

I just did my own thing. There was never any issue. The fact of the matter is, given my seniority, you kind of work your way into a position of privilege. (IP7)

Linked to this issue of funding is the challenge of maintaining capacity within a research group:

You need to have continuity, but our structures don’t allow for that. When I say ‘our’, I mean academia more widely. You can recruit as many students as you want, you get in postdocs, and they are there for a period, then move on. The knowledge is lost, it’s hard to retain capacity in research groups. There are very few, if any, [permanent] places within the research side of it. (IP3)

This is of particular importance when it comes to the need for a very specific skill set, such as is necessary for experts in sustainability challenges and stakeholder engagement, as discussed in the section on ‘Challenges associated with involving private, public and community-based stakeholders in research’, above.

Despite the current difficulties, several interviewees highlighted the significance of the fact that senior university management, and policies, are now calling for TdR:

I think the current senior management in the university value it a bit more than previous ones. So it is a bit easier to do when you are getting kudos for it from senior university people. (IP8)

For some participants, this is in stark contrast to how they had previously been ‘looked down upon’. However, it does not come without concerns; there are questions about the motives of this new agenda, and whether it is truly in the spirit of seeking to establish new relationships and knowledge:

Then the other part, I suppose, is that generally it [host research institute] does recognise this work, but it tends to be for social media and that stuff. (IP6)

The path forward

Counterbalancing the challenges represented through the interview process, there were also some clear motivations expressed around engaging with private, public and community-based stakeholders:

These issues are wicked problems that mean you have to work across the boundaries. (IP5)

Similar to the findings of Cerrato et al. (2018), we found that researchers’ motivations were not led by an emphasis upon funding, but rather facilitated by an emphasis to act upon personal feelings towards what research should seek to achieve in this space. As noted by one participant:

at the end of the day, that is what we are trying to do, make something useful, make a contribution. We are dealing with real-life issues that require an immediate response. (IP4)

Within the established literature, intrinsic motivations outlined include: an urge to work towards the improvement of society through contributing to the advancement of the common good, a desire to engage with issues/problems that transcend disciplinary/academic boundaries, and a sense of fulfilment based upon having an impact upon the lives of both the researcher and the participants (Guimarães et al., 2019). The potential impact of research within society is an important consideration:

You want your research to be used … It is also you want to make some kind of good happen in the world in a way as well. There is those motivation as well. There is very little research done that is not useful. But to actually make it usable you have to cross the divide into practice and seeing, well, how do we take this useful information and make it useable. (IP6)

The importance placed upon a move to usable knowledge is of central importance with regard to sustainability science, climate action and engaged research, and it can be seen as a key driver in the institutional push highlighted through the funding calls noted in the ‘Introduction’.

The benefits of working in topic-focused, inter/transdisciplinary-oriented research institutes, which can facilitate the bringing together and merging of expertise, was noted in some interviews:

We have had sociologists, architects, geographers, ecologists, so it is very mixed TdR membership. That is something that is quite typical in research institutes or environmental institutes. I think that’s a strength in terms of promoting TdR. (IP4)

Such institutes offer space for the building of relationships, sharing of experiences and collaborative learning:

I think the structure of having research centres on thematic areas rather than disciplines like we have here … That is a good way forward. (IP5)

However, one participant highlighted that a key challenge in the development of these transdisciplinary-oriented research institutes is that they cannot be built upon the same foundations as previous research institutes. New (fit for purpose) institutes would require a restructuring of universities to support new ways of coordinating and administrating research:

All of our research centres have to belong to a college. You are in here [host research institute], it’s one of our flagship institutes, it has PIs [principal investigators] from across the university, but yet it must belong to one college. So it is under the College of Science Engineering and Food Science (SEFS), that’s for resource and reporting structure … This then means that academics from outside SEFS are less encouraged to engage with it and contribute, because the benefits don’t go to their schools or college. (IP3)

These new research institutes could help to overcome the structures within academia that hinder progress in the development of transdisciplinary research outlined above: funding procedures, career advancement opportunities, evaluation criteria and so on (Bolger, 2021).

Such a radical re-imagining of university structures will require time. Moreover, some participants suggested that perhaps this was misguided, and that the best place for these collaborative ventures to occur was outside of formal structures:

The nature of academic work now means sometimes it is hard to find a little bit of time for blue-sky thinking, and thinking the thoughts that lead to a research question that leads to some output. (IP1)

Ultimately, what is needed for these new, creative ideas to emerge is the space for meaningful discussions to take place and an understanding/relationship to be built (Byrne et al., 2017b). These are far better facilitated through less formal interactions, coming from a place of humility and respect to discuss each other’s interests:

You start talking to all sorts of people across the university, and you start conversations with people. Building trust with people that they feel comfortable in a space. These things can’t be rushed, and they certainly can’t be institutionalised. (IP7)

While challenges exist for these forms of research practice, both at the level of the institution and in practice, there are clear intrinsic motivations for researchers committed to TdR, which can be enabled through supports, considered further in the ‘Discussion’ section, below.

At a higher level, above how funding within the research institute may be coordinated, there is the question of the funding itself. As outlined by Pohl et al. (2021), there are three key stages to a TdR project: problem framing, problem analysis and exploring impact. Current funding mechanisms generally call for all three of these elements to take place within the confines of a two- or three-year project. It is suggested here that more appropriate calls would involve a staged approach, with dedicated strands for exploratory design to build an improved understanding of problems, and trust among the stakeholders, as well as, much later, evaluation of the impact of previous projects. First:

Research design is very important. Often it’s the bit left to the last minute, and sometimes it’s retrospective, on larger studies, it’s very rushed. A lot of time is spent doing the research, but not enough planning it and conceptualising what it is you ought to do. There is a saying, measure it twice and cut once, get it right. (IP3)

And second:

You need to show impact. Environmental, economic, social, technological. That is the requirement. It is not an aspiration. (IP2)

However, the lifetime of a research project is extremely short relative to long-term societal transitions, so impacts are unlikely to be clear until several years after the work takes place.

Definitional diversity in transdisciplinary practice

Through the interview process, the participants were asked to discuss the different research approaches which they take to their practice, based upon the initial outline which was used to recruit interviewees:

potential participants should have experience of working with industry, communities, policymakers, NGOs etc. in a collaborative, engaged, co-produced and two-way approach, e.g. stakeholders are actively involved in research design, in the research work itself, and the implementation of research findings post-project.

In response to this, 13 different terms emerged in the interviews to describe the research approaches, fitting with the established literature in this space, whereby terminological diversity and uncertainty is often common. Table 5 provides an outline of the different terms which were presented through the process, with examples of definitions provided for them within the literature. This is done not with the intention of providing definitive clarity, but rather to highlight the diverse approaches and traditions which researchers invoke when conducting transdisciplinary research. In some cases, a requirement has been created for engaged forms of sustainability research through emphasis upon it in funding calls. However, funding agencies are often not clear about what is expected, resulting in a wide diversity of interpretations by researchers. This confusion, and the diversity of disciplinary interpretations, was highlighted by the range of different research approaches mentioned by the interview participants.

Institutional barriers

Throughout the interview process, several emergent institutional barriers to co-produced, transdisciplinary research were referenced, both across disciplines and with private, public and community-based stakeholders. These include barriers to career progression, the rigidity of disciplinary structures, coordination and administration difficulties, and the incumbent structure of university schools in relation to establishing thematic research institutes. Within the literature, there is a range of contributions about the institutional challenges associated with transdisciplinarity (Gaziulusoy et al., 2016) and engaged research (Baker et al., 2020). The suggestion can be made that these challenges emanate from the established structures and procedures, particularly in relation to the evaluation of performance within academic institutions. The need for substantial support for researchers working with private, public and community-based stakeholders within departments is noted (Zimmerman, 2019). Within this, however, difficulties are faced from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Situations in which one department supports the approach while another does not create power imbalances within the cross-disciplinary structure of the research project.

As previously outlined in the section on ‘Challenges associated with involving private, public and community-based stakeholders in research’, there is a great risk associated with the mandate across research to pursue these approaches; there are questions to be asked about the motives behind this push, and careful consideration needs to be given to the purpose of involving stakeholders in research. There is a lack of recognition within funding bodies that genuine co-production with communities is very time-consuming and, if it is required, it needs to be resourced properly across a number of fronts (for example, financially, new skill sets, flexibility in being able to compensate communities, and the time required to build trust). The danger of burnout has been referenced in relation to qualitative research as a whole (Clark, 2008), and, as funding continues to prioritise these approaches, research fatigue may increase, with the potential to act as a counterproductive force in relation to both climate action and scientific legitimacy (Warren et al., 2018). There is a thin line between cultivating co-production and data mining communities to suit the needs of researchers, which must be focalised.

The institutional challenge of transdisciplinary research relates to its position within academia. While this position has the advantage of strengthening links at the interface between science and society, it suffers institutionally through a failure to advance theoretical and conceptual developments, coupled with a lack of reflexivity. As such, transdisciplinary research is often perceived as a ‘scientific service’, rather than as something of genuine interest within established disciplines (Wiesmann et al., 2008). Its position within academia must be strengthened at the levels both of research and of teaching, so as to enhance its development. For practitioners of transdisciplinarity, the benefits and motivations of such an approach must be kept at the forefront of the mind, in light of institutional barriers present. Here, the importance of conversations within academic settings which are ‘undertaken in good faith and humility, with the intention of gaining new insights from other disciplinary perspectives and sources of knowledge in order to be better equipped to develop appropriate questions on sustainability related issues’ (Byrne et al., 2017b: 237) is a crucial starting point in the journey towards working in a cross-disciplinary manner that can engage with the wider public on the complex challenges of contemporary society.

Reflections from early career researchers

Here, the two lead co-authors present their reflections on undertaking a TdR approach through their PhD research project, informed by the experience of conducting this research, in line with the importance of the reflexive researcher in TdR practice (Durant, 2022). Coming from energy engineering and sociology, while engaging with a common regional transition project, the experience of undertaking research in this manner presented a number of challenges when compared with more traditional approaches. A pathway for future engaged researchers is an important consideration to encourage TdR moving forward (Holliman and Warren, 2017). A prominent issue emerging from the interviews was that transdisciplinary research has yet to cement a place within academia, and it remains poorly recognised or understood, despite high-level demand from research policy and funding bodies. Consequently, there are tensions inter alia concerning funding, time constraints and reporting/outputs requirements. Here, we reflect on these findings, and offer three key needs to support early career researchers: greater recognition for outputs other than journal articles; training and development opportunities; and network building.

Crucially, the obvious importance placed upon academic articles, and often conflicting metrics of impact, must also be acknowledged as an issue (Sauermann et al., 2020; Schneider et al., 2019). This is of particular relevance for early career researchers, and it highlights a need for more flexible evaluation criteria and metrics in the pursuit of transdisciplinary research. As two early career researchers, we initially struggled with the tension between producing outputs that contribute to our academic profiles, while also being of use to our partners outside of academia. We have sought to achieve this through developing, in parallel, academic articles and learning briefs (Boyle et al., 2021; McGookin et al., 2020, 2021; Watson et al., 2021) throughout our PhD journey. To some degree, however, this has restricted our time in relation to pursuing further upskilling opportunities within the university, which may impact our careers later. Despite this, through implementing a collaborative TdR approach to our PhD research, we both succeeded in delivering a large number of academic articles (five lead author articles each, one co-authored article, and one book chapter each) in tandem with community outputs. However, the journals interested in publishing articles in the space of TdR have, on average, lower impact factors than publications with a single disciplinary focus. This may have impacts for early career researchers.

Structural issues remain. If TdR continues to have less impact in journal article metrics than other forms of scholarship, it will be difficult for capacity and skills to develop in this area, as early stage researchers must eventually prioritise a narrower focus. Yet, in light of the emphasis being placed upon it at a European Union, and indeed global, policy level, there is great promise for the future of this research space. Given the high-level mandate in research policy and funding, the responsibility falls upon transdisciplinary researchers, who must seize the opportunity to shape an accommodating landscape and overcome existing institutional barriers. We feel that one essential element will be dedicated training and development opportunities to support those who wish to explore TdR. As was highlighted by the range of terminologies applied to research approaches, as outlined in Table 5, this is a semantically confusing landscape. This is particularly challenging for early career researchers trying to understand how their work is placed within the existing literature.

As early career researchers conducting transdisciplinary research, we are often faced with a feeling of being outsiders when compared with our disciplinary-focused peers. Opening up a wider space for conversations would be fruitful in expanding our professional networks. Some of the options we have identified for strengthening transdisciplinarity within the institute lie in cross-university gatherings on the topic, facilitated through conferences, seminars, publication projects or university-wide teaching initiatives. These offer important training and development opportunities for early career researchers, while also giving credence to the need for change by building a network and strengthening transdisciplinary practice. However, in light of the emphasis on conversation as a starting point, detached from the institutional pressures inherent within the disciplinary focus of university settings, it is suggested that other informal, more socially oriented gatherings are also key, such as postgraduate reading groups or ‘meet-ups’.

Research ethics statement

The authors declare that research ethics approval for this article was provided by University College Cork Social Research Ethics Council ethics board.

Consent for publication statement

The authors declare that research participants’ informed consent to publication of findings – including photos, videos and any personal or identifiable information – was secured prior to publication.