Creating Inspiring Workshops and Courses in Transdisciplinarity: A Guide - Manual / Resource - Page 95
Striving for societal relevance
Investigations of the practice of TDR reveal that researchersocietal partner interaction takes diverse forms that can be
thought of as a continuum between two poles. At one end, which
might be loosely described as “researcher-heavy,” researchers
take the initiative in the project, framing the problem, setting the
goals, controlling the budget, and in general have more power
over the process. At the other end, societal partners collaborate
on an equal footing and are fully involved in the framing of the
problem and goals, and in the planning and implementation
of the research. Many projects can be situated somewhere
along the continuum between these two poles. Various terms
are used to describe the level of engagement of stakeholders,
ranging from informing or contractual through contributary; or
consulting to co-producing, participatory, and democratic. There
is no single best approach to engagement with societal actors,
and depending on the nature and stage of the research and the
local conditions, different strategies for collaboration might be
appropriate. Therefore, who to involve and how to engage need
to be explicitly considered early in the planning of the research
and reassessed throughout the project.
Further reading:
•
Bammer, Gabriele. 2021. Stakeholder engagement
primer:6. Making engagement effective. Integration and
Implementation Insights. November 18, 2021.
•
Moser, S. (2022). Identifying and Effectively Engaging
Stake- and Rights-holders (Job Aid). Resilience Metrics
toolkit.
•
Schneider, Flurina, and Tobias Buser. 2018. Promising
Degrees of Stakeholder Interaction in Research for
Sustainable Development. Sustainability Science 13 (1):
129–42.
Practices Engaging with societal partners
p. 90
