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This paper aims to improve the understanding of individual transdisciplinary PhD research in a developing country context, focusing on three individual PhD case studies in South Africa.

Multiple-case method was used, and three completed transdisciplinary PhD research efforts undertaken at the Stellenbosch University were selected. They were coordinated through the TsamaHub, an inter-faculty platform at the University which organises educational modules for transdisciplinary research. Using actual research experiences and reflections of the three individual PhDs, the paper evaluates their work in terms of ontological, epistemological, methodological and methodical/methods aspects.

The central challenge to individual PhD researchers is engagement with non-academic actors to enable joint problem formulation, analysis and transformation. To overcome this, the paper suggests that developing individual epistemic relationships to build “transdisciplinary epistemic communities” should be considered for inclusion as an intentional aspect of transdisciplinary research design.

“Transdisciplinary epistemic communities” is still a concept in its infancy and needs more work before it may be theoretically and practically useful.

Continuously guiding the individual transdisciplinary research process in a reflexive, recursive, transparent and equal manner is absolutely critical because transdisciplinary research cannot be done successfully if dominated by overly methods-driven approaches.

The discourse around transdisciplinary methodology has major implications for the design of individual PhD research. The paper provides recommendations to enhance the theory and practice of individual transdisciplinary PhD research.

Inter- and transdisciplinarity are core concepts in almost all education for sustainable development (ESD) competence frameworks and curricula. To equip students with inter- and transdisciplinary competencies is highly demanding for educators. Educators must not only know how to teach students such competencies, but need to be experienced in inter- and transdisciplinary research and must have some technical knowledge about inter- and transdisciplinarity. This paper aims to show how university educators can be supported in their teaching.

The paper is a case study based on research and on experiences in interdisciplinary teaching and in supporting educators in their interdisciplinary teaching.

The paper presents a competence framework of interdisciplinary competencies to guide university teachers that has been developed, implemented and refined in interdisciplinary study programmes belonging to the field of ESD. It shows how the professional development of educators could be addressed referring to the experiences in these programmes. The measures presented consist for one thing of interdisciplinary processes among the educators and of measures directly supporting educators in their teaching for another thing.

The case study the paper refers to is of special value, first, because the experiences are based on long-standing research and on two decades of experiences. Second, because considerable efforts were made to deliver coherent and consistent interdisciplinary teaching in which interdisciplinarity was not only a teaching subject for the students but showed by the educators as well so that the educators involved did not only talk about competencies for inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations but also set an example in their own doings.

In collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders in these courses is and what students are meant to learn from the transdisciplinary pedagogies.

This research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study into the intentions of transdisciplinary courses in which universities collaborate with their home cities: Delft University of Technology in Delft and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions in Amsterdam. The study compares the written intentions of eight courses in course descriptions with the ideal intentions that teachers describe in interviews.

First, seven of the eight investigated courses were designed for urban stakeholders to participate at a distance or as a client but rarely was a course intended to lead to a collaborative partnership between the city and students. Second, the metacognitive learning objectives, such as learning to deal with biases and values of others or getting to know one’s strengths and weaknesses in collaboration, were often absent in the course descriptions. Learning objectives relating to metacognition are at the heart of transdisciplinary work, yet when they remain implicit in the learning objectives, they are difficult to teach.

This paper presents insight into the levels of participation intended in transdisciplinary courses. Furthermore, it shows the (mis)alignment between intended learning objectives in course descriptions and teachers’ ideals. Understanding both the current state of transdisciplinarity in sustainability courses and what teachers envision is vital for the next steps in the development of transdisciplinary education.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how service, as an interdisciplinary area of research, can increase its potential for transdisciplinary contributions from the perspective of what signifies intra-, multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary research.

The essay first discusses common perspectives on the service concept before presenting a review on what signifies intra-, multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary research. The emerging theoretical framework is followed by a discussion on the challenges and opportunities for service research in making interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theoretical contributions.

The research provides a typological framework for understanding intra-, multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary service research and, implications related to how service research contributions can become increasingly inter- and transdisciplinary.

The paper contributes to widening the scope of service research by focussing on how the domain can overcome hurdles and increase its potential for making theoretical contributions that are applicable across and beyond established research disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to report on experiences and reflect on challenges in transdisciplinary technology foresight as exemplified by cognition and robotics research.

The study was conducted as a broad transdisciplinary process involving users and producers of robot technology solutions as well as scientists and other experts in cognition and robotics. Transdisciplinarity is understood as the transcendence of disciplinary modes together with the involvement and participation of non‐scientists in problem formulation and knowledge provision. The study focuses on the possibilities for innovation at the crossroads where robotics and cognition meet.

The paper reflects on the following methodological issues: medium‐ and long‐term research and innovation possibilities and barriers in a transdisciplinary context; the classification and framing of transdisciplinary fields; the facilitation of technology foresight processes; and the trustworthiness of the foresight process and its recommendations.

The results have been disseminated among relevant advisory and grant‐awarding bodies within research and innovation, relevant knowledge institutions and universities, and companies on both the development and user sides of the technologies.

The paper contributes to European experiences on national‐level foresight exercises. The conceptual findings of the case study are of value to science and innovation policy makers, foresight practitioners and scholars within the field.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the potential of online communication technologies to facilitate university‐led transdisciplinary sustainable development research and lower the ecological footprints of such research projects. A series of case studies is to be explored.

A one year project is conducted in which a series of research tasks are carried out on an online communications platform. Findings are compared to other examples from the literature.

Online communication technology can be used to facilitate transdisciplinary research tasks, saving time, money and with less environmental impact than that of face‐to‐face meetings. However, in order for online collaboration to be successful the researchers must be very organized and have strong facilitation skills.

The research takes place in a North American setting. Time zone issues and access to sufficient internet technology can be a barrier in global research collaboration.

Online communication technology can be a practical way to lower the environmental impact of the research process and lower the cost of collaborative meetings.

The outcomes of this research suggest online collaboration can play a much larger role in student and faculty research, including but not limited to online research analysis, data collection and field exploration.

This paper aims to describe the transdisciplinary, multiphase, mixed methods, generative design research, participatory planning and social design activities developed and implemented by the West Virginia University Rural Tourism Design Team and associated outcomes.

The multiphase methodology included quantitative and qualitative research in initial stages of the study (key informant interviews, resident attitudes toward tourism survey, visitor preferences survey, economic impact analysis) which informed social design activities at latter stages (asset mapping, landscape design/visualization of opportunities and sites targeted for development and cultural identity design) using generative design tools facilitating co-design with the communities and helping the destination take sequential steps toward achieving their goals and objectives.

Opportunities and challenges identified through multiple methods were triangulated and pointed to the same conclusions including the need for long term planning and managed growth; protecting community values; underutilized natural, cultural and historic assets; the opportunity to develop nature-based, cultural and historical attractions; and the need for a common vision and collective identity.

This study makes a unique contribution to literature on sustainable tourism planning by incorporating social design activities to visualize findings of more traditional planning methods and provide tangible, visible outcomes of planning activities which can guide local stakeholders in rural destinations more directly to funding for planning recommendations and project implementation.

The transdisciplinary and social/generative/participatory approach provided a scaffolding of outputs to the community with citizen control and active involvement throughout the planning and design process. The incorporation of social design provided tangible outcomes including site designs and a cultural identity. Generative design research gives people a language with which they can imagine and express their ideas and dreams for future experiences.

This paper investigates the role of social design in a transdisciplinary, multiphase project to support sustainable tourism planning.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the particular character of the research and development project “Sustainable University – Sustainable development in the Context of University Remits” which lies both in its integrative perspective on universities and the attempt to transfer its findings onto other higher education institutions.

The paper describes the testing and further development of transdisciplinary research methods (transformative approach, scenario development) for the purpose of both exploring and testing potentials/capabilities for sustainable development of a single institution (case study: University of Lüneburg, Germany) against the backdrop of sustainability concept; and making this kind of development transferable to other universities. The paper offers additional reinforcement of strategic scope/effectiveness by means of reference to findings of higher education research (e.g. relevance of neo‐institutionalism)

There is empirical evidence for successful development of transdisciplinary techniques for sustainability in higher education domains (among others management, research, and teaching – cf. other contributions of this issue). Further, dissemination of the “Lüneburg Approach” by establishing an intermediate level of collaboration between sustainability activists within universities and in higher education policy and administration (e.g. constitution of working groups in northern Germany and at the federal level)

There is a need for enhancing research tools for transdisciplinary sustainability science; deliberating on international transferability (current focus: (solely) German academia)

A systemic approach is indispensable: instead of focusing upon isolated sustainability fields of action” (management, research, teaching, etc.), all‐embracing advancement to encompass their strategic relationships and thus synergies.

The paper provides a holistic view of academic organisations addressing the issue of how universities are to be proactive in advancing sustainable development.

This chapter aims to present and critically question the work undertaken with a group of children as experts in a transdisciplinary research project, ‘Exploring the way to and from school with children: An interdisciplinary approach of children’s experiences of the third place’. The project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.¹ A partnership was established between the research team and a group of 10 children (11–12 years old). The children were actively involved as co-researchers to provide the research team with expertise regarding their experiences of the school journey. Their roles as co-researchers included refining the research questions and methodological tools, analysing data, and drafting final recommendations. In this chapter, the authors outline the different stages of this transdisciplinary partnership with children as co-researchers, whilst addressing some key issues encountered during the process, including: What is expertise? When, and under what conditions, can children genuinely be co-researchers? What ethical aspects should be considered? The authors commence with an outline of the project’s theoretical framework before detailing how the participatory process enabled children to actively take part and give their views on the research. The authors address a specific focus on the ethical challenges encountered as part of the complexities of conducting research with children. They conclude with some reflections on the benefits of involving children as co-researchers and, in doing so, offer a critique of the notion of ‘expertise’ in research with children.

The dynamics of modern life lead to societal changes that affect innovation systems. Entrepreneurship is an important driver for fostering adaptive capacities of innovation systems in such uncertain and complex environments. This study aims to gain a detailed understanding of how (innovative) entrepreneurship can promote innovation systems, leading to more sustainable societies. A particular focus is placed on migrant entrepreneurship in the digital economy, as a concrete implication of innovative entrepreneurship, and its role within the Austrian innovation system.

In order to develop a shared system understanding from a scientific and practical perspective, transdisciplinary multistage system modeling was applied. The transdisciplinary discourse involved 14 experts, and several system models were iteratively co-created during the course of the research.

The main result demonstrates the interrelationship between the innovation system and migrant entrepreneurship in the digital economy, which includes six core reinforcing loops: (1) the mindsets of entrepreneurs, (2) the role of international collaboration, (3) the role of entrepreneurial education, the financial sphere in regard to (4) government and (5) private funding, as well as (6) the impact of formal procedures.

The authors present and discuss the relational dynamics of this complex phenomenon as well as the applied transdisciplinary approach, with the aim of identifying a potential way to improve the sustainable impact of (migrant) entrepreneurship considering the case of the Austrian innovation system.