Producing `relevant knowledge' in transdisciplinary sustainability research. Researchers' sense-making of and coping with togetherness in heterogeneous projects

Beschreibung

What knowledge is needed for approaching the “grand challenges of our time” (European Commission, Lund Declaration 2009) has been increasingly debated over recent years. While scientific knowledge is considered as crucial for understanding and addressing challenges like climate change or loss of natural resources, it is called for transgressing disciplinary boundaries and for including local and practice relevant knowledge into research as a basis for political decisions and practical solutions. Transdisciplinarity is one approach that aims at extending research teams and peer-communities to include researchers from different disciplines and societal actors like stakeholders, practitioners or people that are ‘affected’ by certain developments. Researchers within such programs face the call for engaging in new constellations of togetherness (understood as meaning of and relation between collectivity and individuality). Their genuine disciplinary community should no longer build the sole basis for research questions and approaches, their source of feedback and collaboration or the audience for communicating their findings. Yet, the diverging knowledge demands that heterogeneous actors carry into research seem hard to reconcile with the kinds of knowledge that are valued within scientific disciplines - and that researchers need to secure their position within science. In this paper, I ask how researchers who engage in different practices of togetherness in transdisciplinary research, understand and produce ‘relevant knowledge’.

Zeitraum	3 Dez. 2015 → 5 Dez. 2015
Ereignistitel	Living in Technoscientific Worlds. International Conference Celebrating the Launch of STS Austria
Veranstaltungstyp	Keine Angaben
Bekanntheitsgrad	National