Southeast Center for Education in the Arts

Transdisciplinary studies are an area of research and education that addresses contemporary issues that cannot be solved by one or even a few points-of-view. They bring together academic experts, field practitioners, community members, research scientists, political leaders, and business owners among others to solve some of the pressing problems facing the world, from the local to the global.

What sets transdisciplinary studies apart from multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and integrative studies is a particular emphasis on engagement, investigation, and participation in addressing present-day issues and problems in a manner that explicitly destabilizes disciplinary boundaries while respecting disciplinary expertise. They are built around three key concepts: transformative praxis, constructive problem-solving, and real-world engagement. The advocates of transdisciplinary studies argue that they come from the nature of the 21st century world, with its loss of a unifying narrative of knowledge, the continuing destabilization of disciplinary boundaries, and the transgressive character of the times. Our world, they claim, requires a contextualizing of knowledge in order to address complex worldwide issues (such as global warming and ethnic cleansing) and a collaboration across academic disciplines that includes non-academics in solving problems and addressing global issues.

Our educational institutions not only bear little resemblance to organic systems, but are the starting point in the creation of many other separated ideas, mindsets, and practices. The isolation of ideas and tools into separate disciplines is the result of a mechanical view of life, birthed in the heart of industrialization, obsession with quantifiable data, and the rise of the scientific management. However, life in general doesn't operate mechanistically, but is porous, complex, and organic. Therefore, not only is life meant to be connected across concepts and practices, but the separation of ideas and disciplines naturally results in wicked problems. When we attempt to solve these problems within the silos where they were created, the problems become more confusing and the wicket gets stickier.

Transdisciplinarity is the meshing or integrating of multiple disciplinary theories, practices, and tools in order to create new solutions to the problems erected through the separation of professions into silos of concepts and information. When these separated systems intersect, the space across or in-between them can result in something more than the sum of the parts. These new ideas have a greater potential to answer the grand challenges of our times.

The world is facing a polycrisis, a situation where there is no one, single big problem – only a series of overlapping, interconnected problems. These interconnected, complex problems cannot be solved by using independent, fragmented, disciplinary-focused knowledge. These siloed solutions cannot ignore a diversity of voices or merged perspectives.

Moving toward transdisciplinarity does not mean abolishing disciplines; indeed, their varying perspectives are needed to solve complex problems. However, disciplines need to be taught and research conducted in the context of their dynamic relationships with each other and with societal problems. They cannot be perceived as protected silos of specialized knowledge anymore. Only fluency across disciplinary boundaries will provide clear views of the world and what needs to be done to ameliorate humanity’s pressing problems. This fluency emerges through well-thought out opportunities for cross-collaborative work. Transdisciplinary work entails a fused way of looking at social problems leading to an amalgamation of disciplinary concepts rather than an amalgamation of disciplinary units.

Inherent in transdisciplinary work is being able to communicate with each other. The issue of finding a common language so people can talk to each other entails more than finding the right words. It requires empathy, the ability to see the world though the lens of others and then act from those insights.

With transdisciplinary work, people have to anticipate that there will be a variety of outcomes rather than one right outcome. Each outcome will resonate more or less with different actors involved in the process (academics, students, community members, corporations). People must be prepared to accept that their perspective may have to be overshadowed in order to solve this particular social problem.

Arizona State University uses the term working at the seams when referring to inter-departmental /interdisciplinary partnerships and joint problem solving. It purposely developed new research centers and institutions and positioned them as the place where translational research occurs (they do not use the word transdisciplinary). Industry and community stakeholders meet up with academics at these centers, which serve as the incubators for innovation and new knowledge generation. The resultant translational research is readily applicable to the stakeholders involved in the research (faculty members, communities or industry). ASU referred to this as use-inspired research, evolving at the seams. Their concept actually mirrors the quantum physics concept of working in the vacuum between entities. The vacuum is not empty but full of possibilities.