Kathrin Wieck

The Walk & Talk format was designed by the TU Berlin Office for Science and Society and further developed in the ENHANCE alliance to help researchers and other relevant staff become acquainted with local research projects facilitating knowledge exchange between science and society. It also aims to strengthen the understanding of the strategies and structures established at the ENHANCE member universities that support these projects. This format complements integrative processes of mapping and analysing transdisciplinary initiatives and ongoing inter-university exchange on this topic. In this introduction, we present  guidelines intended to support universities in planning and hosting future Walk & Talks. 

The concept of „good practice“ rather than “best practice” aims to be more responsive to the reality of academic work, including the challenges, barriers and triggers for creating a favourable institutional environment to foster transdisciplinary research. The “ENHANCE good practices” have been identified and selected as key initiatives. They illustrate how different kinds of transdisciplinary initiatives at different university levels between strategy, research and education can be successfully developed, how they are linked to each other and how they contribute to the institutionalisation of transdisciplinarity.

Beyond the growing importance of transdisciplinary and participatory research approaches in both academia, politics, funding lines and urban development, researchers address the need for institutional change to enable collaborative ways of research and to integrate them as a regular part of the scientific system. This change is necessary to initiate transdisciplinary projects in a more targeted manner and support them in an advisory capacity, link them into research and teaching and establish long-term collaborations between research and society. The article presents the creation of a mutual learning environment by the ENHANCE integrative process of knowledge exchange about sustainable development through transdisciplinary research. This was achieved step-by-step: by integrating different levels of experience with transdisciplinarity, by developing a joint knowledge base, and by generating recommendations for institutional change.

Transdisciplinarity means bridging the gap between science and society. Facing the complex transformation challenges and developing sustainable development solutions, it gained more and more awareness in academic institutions to establish it as a research principle for creating new integrated knowledge and fostering transformation in science and society. What is transdisciplinarity as a research mode, how do we understand it, and how is it related to sustainable development? With a common understanding in the ENHANCE Alliance, we built a framework for transdisciplinary research processes and integrated knowledge exchange between science and society. As the ENHANCE universities each have their own organisational structure and culture, a shared and broad understanding of transdisciplinarity is key to foster the institutionalisation of transdisciplinarity.