1 Introduction

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) is a framing of scientific practice in which collaboration on problems or issues of common interest is located outside disciplinary approaches, and is geared towards a transformation of the current situation towards something more desirable, albeit without necessarily knowing what that is. Any form of ‘transformation’ invariably has a normative component, and the same goes for positionality. A TDR context thus has much to do with both. The issue of positionality specifically in inter- and transdisciplinary research settings has become a more prominent object of study within these scholarly traditions (e.g. Freeth & Vilsmaier, 2020).

Our contribution takes the positionality of the researcher as the departure point. In much the same way that is impossible to conduct TDR in a way that is detached from the practices it seeks to change, we cannot remove our academic identities from the change process. We are ‘alive to the world too’. Essentially, we are talking about taking the effort to relate to the worlds we are trying to transform in one way or another (Law & Singleton, 2013). Furthermore, in the context of transformative research (Fazey et al., 2020, p. 6), there is a call for more ‘reflexive second order science’ which ‘shifts focus away from studying a system as if looking in from the outside to conducting research as if from within. This includes reflexively examining one’s own role in the way a system is reproduced. This opens space for inclusion of more diverse forms of knowledge and knowing’. For Bartels and Wittmayer (2018, p. 6), knowing ‘is thus not a monological process of “discovering” an external, static reality in which researchers can abstain from any responsibility for it; rather, it is a dialogical process of intervening in actual situations with immediate consequences for who is and who is not affected, included, and empowered’. We work dialogically to enact this—to couple our contributions more carefully with our own identities. The first author (CG), an early career researcher, speaks with the co-authors (SH, MS, JW, TZJ), who are more experienced researchers from various fields of science and society working in inter- and transdisciplinary settings.Footnote 1 We introduce the different themes of the conversation in connection with relevant literature situate insights from this dialogue to scholarly discussions throughout the chapter.

The following activities were integral to the crafting of this conversation. The first author initially undertook an analysis of a dataset of ‘learning questions’ from a postgraduate training programme on TDR at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2015–present). During the programme, participants develop and address personal learning questions in relation to setting up, conducting and evaluating TDR. These questions reflect on what researchers find important (often at the beginning of their career) in making sense of their own efforts in implementing this form of research practice. In an analysis of over 500 learning questions, 53 were coded as the researcher’s roles and competences in transdisciplinary research settings. The analysis then fed into a workshop, co-designed by the authors, convened at the International Transdisciplinarity Conference in September 2021. Fourteen workshop participants discussed the challenges and opportunities of the roles of researchers in transdisciplinary processes.

To an extent, the dialogue here aims to express a broader perspective and experience than our own, while acknowledging the difficulties in generalizing the nature of transdisciplinary work. With that caveat, we frame TDR (and thus our discussion on roles within it) with three salient features. First, the centrality of learning processes as part and parcel of research practice that seeks to contribute to transformative processes in some way (Hirsch Hadorn et al., 2008). Second, we emphasize the pertinence of experimentation in such processes. Third, since the research aims to contribute to transformation related to some form of a real-world challenge or problem, the research setting tends to be particularly normatively charged. The examples we discuss below—from our experience in transdisciplinary initiatives—illustrate these features in action, and their implications for the roles and positionalities of the researcher.

2 Breaching Researcher Identities in Transdisciplinary Work

2.1 Breaching Experiments: Taking Apart Researchers’ Identities in Transdisciplinary Research

Understanding the role of the researcher should not only be a case of learning by doing since there are many valuable resources to help us prepare for transdisciplinary research. These include guidance on the many roles of the researcher, based on previous empirical work (Wittmayer et al., 2021, p. 11). These can be learned up to a point. But we should emphasize that roles are developed and crafted in specific contexts. In relation to acting with others, with different worldviews, interests and framings, our roles and identities are breached as we navigate through making sense of shared issues of concern.

CG:

A very common question postgraduate students pose concerns how they are supposed to know what roles to assume in their project at what time. Some are more comfortable with being an expert scientist, others with being a facilitator or change agent.

JW:

The thing about researchers’ roles in TDR is that they are made in practice. They aren’t something you are or have which you can just apply in the research setting. We have to position ourselves again and again.

Box 15.1. Using roles as resources in urban sustainability research

This research took place in a Rotterdam neighbourhood that had been labelled as a deprived area, with various problems from a policy perspective. Low levels of income, lower levels of education in comparison with the rest of the city—issues that have become considered to be problematic. The work involved trying to understand how sustainability governance could work on the local level: how could problems be addressed in the neighbourhood and by whom? The idea was that a systems analysis—including problem structuring, visioning and experimentation, that we would conduct with about 20 people from the area, together—would elicit insights and actions for the neighbourhood to become more sustainable.

JW:

And we met with some resistance initially. Specifically connected to the idea that researchers would come in and ‘extract’ knowledge from the neighbourhood without any form of reciprocity. To address these concerns and to clarify the type of transdisciplinary action-oriented research we were aiming to do, we convened a meeting to contextualize our methodologies. This meeting included negotiating our roles as action researchers. Eventually, they related our research to some of the participants’ experiences in ‘engaged research’ initiatives in Rotterdam as part of urban renewal programmes in the 1980s—as activating researchers. That’s where we really found each other in terms of the language we were using, and the positions we were taking.

CG:

Yes, finding a shared language is important if you want to move forward. But what makes this so applicable to transdisciplinary research? Isn’t this relevant for all forms of research? Someone working in a physiology lab surely has to adapt in some way in relation to the surprises thrown up by their experiments. Social studies of science have explored this kind of thing before (see e.g. Star, 1985). Isn’t that the same as having to deal with resistance in your research?

JW:

To some degree, but there is something else, something different. Being able to talk to one another is surely necessary in transdisciplinary research, where ‘the public’ is not some vague idea ‘out there’, but a collaborating party in the research. I tried to address the tension resulting from different understandings of what research is and what researchers do by referring to roles as a resource—that these are negotiated through dialogue. I think that this tension comes from the dilemma of doing ‘research’ and ‘engagement’. While you are critical, you also know the system, including the actors involved, and take a critical stance towards injustice and so on. But you also need to be relational—finding ways to relate to the people you are working with in these shared endeavours. One way of doing so is by negotiating roles through dialogue (see Bartels and Wittmayer [2018], who discuss the critical–relational position in the context of transformative action research).

MS:

All research processes have uncertainty, but this is amplified in TDR settings.

CG:

Which means we cannot anticipate the kinds of roles researchers need to take in advance—this has to emerge in practice in some way.

SH:

And that uncertainty means we may have to depart from the comfort zones of pre-defined roles as researchers.Footnote 2 Assuming other roles than that of the ‘traditional scientist’ involves leaving your comfort zone, it has a lot to do with vulnerability as well as uncertainty.

CG:

Meaning that we could expect to find ourselves in positions that feel uncomfortable?

TZJ:

And we also need to consider the ways in which certain roles are ascribed to us.

MS:

The example below [Box 15.2] refers to these—it comes from my work with several Swedish health and welfare agencies, where we have been involved in producing systematic reviews as a consequence of the evidence-based Master’s programme that I coordinate at my university.

Box 15.2. Lending legitimacy in evidence-based practices

Three cases of these collaborative evidence-based initiatives have been conducted for and with health and welfare organizations.Footnote 3 The first was with a public health agency and concerned systematic reviews on interventions to prevent suicide. The second includes two systematic reviews, one on the prevention of violent extremism and another on prevention of antisemitism in schools. In the third case, we collaborated with a provider of social services. As in the other two cases, we developed reviews, this time for disability care. In this case, however, we simultaneously developed the review format, drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholarship on standardization and informal expertise.

MS:

The common denominator in all of the projects in which we were invited to participate was on the basis of our expertise in systematic reviews, i.e. a technique for producing summaries of all available knowledge in a certain area. This type of expertise is highly valuable in cases of high scientific, professional or political uncertainty. In all of the cases, I would claim that this expertise had the potential to lend legitimacy to the commissioning organizations. What differed, however, were the commissioners’ interest in and openness to our STS-related analytical competencies. In short, all of them were interested in legitimacy, but their interest in reflexive scholarship varied…

CG:

So your role became ascribed through your position as an academic researcher?

MS:

Yes and no. My role was ascribed through a particular set of research competencies that met the needs of the commissioning body. Other potential academic roles—such as my reflexive abilities trained in STS—that were less familiar, understood or desired by the commissioning body were sometimes not ascribed to me, at least not formally. This does not have to become a problem, but it may do so in at least two ways, both related to methodological norms. One problem concerns different actors’ requirements and another concerns academic requirements. In most situations, I suspect that my reflexive abilities were picked up implicitly by actors as a certain relaxed attitude to the legitimating methodologies that had prompted the commission. The STS motto ‘it could have been different’, I think, may create spaces for actors who sometimes are burdened by constrained methodological requirements, not least in areas influenced by the evidence-based policy movement. Several explicit interactions in all of the three cases lend support to this conclusion; our broad methodological approach to systematic reviews was interesting and to some extent liberating. We came in with a legitimating method in combination with a broader-than-usual methodological attitude.

CG:

Both you and the commissioning bodies benefited from your dual position! But you suggest that this dual position can become a problem, too?

MS:

I believe so. In one particular case our methodological breadth became a problem. While our team’s work had previously been appreciated in one agency, its internal processes at one point deliberately moved to redefine and constrain the methods we had at our disposal. This started a series of negotiations between me and the commissioning party that ended in divorce. The ascribed role, you could say, became too one-sided, too detached from our analytical interest and conscience. We had to ask for a painful, premature ending of the contract. Even if, initially, there had been an informal acceptance of our methodological breadth, the agency’s evolving internal processes clearly trumped this tacit agreement. At some point the institution declared quite clearly: ‘it cannot be different’.

Another problem of roles concerns the issue of building up a career. Since I have tenure, I have considerable space for deciding how to use my time and what interests to cater to. Clearly, this is more perilous in a more junior position! As a PhD student, disciplinary detours can threaten a burgeoning academic identity. But also for my situation: in order to be promoted and for collegiate recognition, I needed to adjust to the methodological criteria of my own discipline, where I had to publish in specific journals, using particular theoretical resources. It is not enough to use STS to widen collaborating actors’ methodological spaces. This is understandable. We have to conform to the methodologies of our disciplines. But, in another sense it surely isn’t understandable. My university boasts of its aim to engage collaboratively with the surrounding society, and many colleagues are curious about my group’s collaborations, but for promotion disciplinary-bounded publications are more or less everything. Thus, in my view, transdisciplinary work is the sometimes perilous, and more often fruitful, navigation between more or less implicit methodological norms.

CG:

The other cases were more fruitful than perilous?

MS:

Fortunately, yes! The second case resembled the first one, but without the evolving institutional constraints on all the available methods. However, the commissions clearly did not involve any fully fledged reflexive processes, typical of STS analyses. The boundary conditions of the deliverables were pre-set, but the path to producing these allowed for some methodological breadth. In the third case, there was far greater scope. We are developing new ways of doing knowledge support and reviews. There are some pre-set rules we are using, which we are trying to expand and work with reconstructively. As such we are changing our ways of doing things, adjusting to certain demands to deliver what is needed, while our collaborators are also changing in this process. We are both changing and learning—it is a two-way thing.

CG:

Would it be correct to say that the third case combines the best of two worlds: both legitimacy and reflexivity, both concrete deliverables for the actors and analytical deliverables for academia? If so, what are the preconditions of such win-win collaboration?

MS:

A very relevant question. In my view, the interaction between epistemology and institutional arrangements is key here. In my three cases institutional arrangements have been so important. In the first case there had been epistemological affinities for several years, but they did not hold under changing institutional pressure. In the second case, a common epistemological awareness facilitated collaborations, but the institutional frames did not promote a more fully fledged exploration of the methodological formats that would have been analytically interesting for our group. The institutional frames of the third case—through funding and ownership—were designed, from the outset, to combine legitimating delivery and analytical explorations and even reconstructions. It is very interesting. What sort of institutional spaces or frameworks enable all actors involved to adapt, learn and transform? And of course, you are not always in a position to decide on your own.

CG:

And that may be a good thing, may it not?

MS:

I think you are right. Too much control may not be compatible with the nature of transdisciplinary work. It is true that the evolving boundaries on available methods in the first case were detrimental—to us, perhaps not to the agency—but you cannot avoid running into boundaries. What is crucial to me is the possibility to experiment with these boundaries. Haven’t we all experienced ‘breaching experiments’: places, and times, when our ambitions, competencies or roles were breached, because of the nature of transdisciplinary research? It’s that opening up that we’ve all felt in some way: we had all come into these situations thinking ‘this is what I want to do?’ and then realizing that the actors, the collaborators, want to do something else. And they know things—things I didn’t know that I didn’t know. We have all had these experiences of the world (our worldviews? framings?) being ‘broken apart’ to some extent. These experiences tell us that our roles as researchers are not fixed in TDR—as part of the co-learning process, our positions, relations to others and so on, must be reassembled in the practice of research.

2.2 The Consequences of Breaching: Academic Quality and Qualifying

Quality and qualifications are crucial when we refer to positioning in transdisciplinary research. Early career researchers are well aware of the dilemma posed by doing TDR in the academic environment. They want to know how they can navigate between taking different positions, in particular in becoming an expert in ‘their field’ while conducting research work beyond disciplinary boundaries. This raises the question: to what kinds of quality criteria can and should we subscribe? For instance, many early career researchers in the global health field want to address how they can situate themselves more as activists while at the same time remaining part of the status quo, being part of the university infrastructure in academic research. Although efforts to qualify good scholarly work should not be downplayed, others have argued that conventional comparisons between disciplinary and transdisciplinary work places them on the same plane, which might not necessarily be very useful (see Fochler & Rijcke, 2017; Rafols et al., 2012). Following this line of thought, the point is that transformative research settings have a different set of implications.

CG:

A common question or concern is that it appears difficult to know what good scholarly inquiry looks like in transdisciplinary settings. It seems far more elusive than in disciplinary spaces, because of the highly context-specific nature of transdisciplinary research products and findings. Especially if, as we are saying, the craft of the research process demands flexibility and creativity,Footnote 4 we are always situated in a specific time and space.

SH:

We started by conducting a systematic review, trying to develop indicators for TDR ‘success’ with a focus on integration. We struggled! For four years now, I have had this huge database with a wide range of indicators. Although it’s not worth poring over the details, there is something to be said about assuming and balancing a dual role in TDR settings, that is, what we called a ‘creative science role’ and, at the same time, a ‘supportive service role’. I should emphasize the distinction between the two roles here. The supportive service role implies, for instance, becoming familiar with a particular method or tool to be applied in a specific TDR setting and facilitating the subsequent TDR process in that setting.Footnote 5 The creative science role means digging into different disciplinary perspectives, identifying relevant gaps and critical connections, and linking them to the broader literature. Assuming and balancing these two roles in TDR settings is challenging, but also allow you to develop expertise in facilitation and integration—so they are really key elements of quality transdisciplinary work. A prerequisite to a transdisciplinary expertise, even.

CG:

Is it a case of rethinking what ‘the scientific role’ consists of?

SH:

It’s also about visibility. Being acknowledged for this kind of important work of creating the bigger picture by combining previously unconnected perspectives; this work of establishing critical connections represents a very important intellectual contribution of researchers working at the interface between different disciplines, but also between research, policy and practice. Unfortunately, that work is rarely made visible, and is therefore rarely acknowledged and recognized.

CG:

So in making room for different perspectives on an issue, fostering their articulation and so on, the researcher facilitating that process needs, in some way, to do away with their own specialist or expert framing on the matter, while simultaneously being able to make their own ‘intellectual contribution’.

SH:

Yes! This work led to us developing the notion of ‘integration experts’—researchers who lead, administrate, manage, monitor, assess, accompany, and/or advise others on inter- and transdisciplinary integration.Footnote 6 This requires taking on and balancing many different roles, which is a role in itself.

CG:

In that it demands a certain type of ‘expertise’ to be able to navigate through these positions?

SH:

Yes, definitely! I think you need different kinds of expertise; you need a sort of interactional expertise (following Collins & Evans, 2002). That means the expertise to speak the language of a discipline or field without necessarily being able to contribute to that discipline or field in depth. You also need contributory expertise, namely the expertise to contribute to research in a discipline or field. But such expertise, I would say, is not enough; when we conducted a workshop on integration experts at the ITD Conference in 2019, participants claimed that critical personal qualities were at least as important as such different kinds of expertise. These qualities included, for instance, openness, curiosity, creativity, sociability, but also persistence and patience as well as degrees of reflexivity and humility.Footnote 7 I think, if we really believe that TDR can contribute to solving pressing societal problems of our time, we need to make room for these kinds of experts, this sort of expertise—which I consider crucial for realizing the integrative potential of TDR.

CG:

Yes, but I suppose the point here comes back to the struggle you have faced in classifying ‘successful’ TDR. It is difficult to do because TDR (and the dimensions of expertise needed to enable it) is very different, or perhaps needs to be so, in different places and spaces. So it is probably useful to think about the qualities of TDR work to get a sense of in what ways we can qualify good work.

MS:

I have a deep scepticism of and suspicions about theory—generalizations in particular. So I see it as a mark of quality that I'm not just doing ‘academic work’ when I'm engaging with health agencies, social care providers and so on. In doing so I am being challenged by their worldviews, their needs, having to translate what I think I know into their languages—that’s really a driver for me. It’s so easy to get stuck in thinking ‘because I wrote a paper about it, accepted by this journal’ equates to having an authoritative understanding of the matter. That to me is not quite good enough.

JW:

For me, it’s better—more intellectually stimulating—to be making sense of things together with others in the room. I ‘grew up’, academically speaking, in a very ‘engaged-activist’ kind of institute—I eventually stepped out, towards this ‘normal’, disciplined way. I also had to gain my credits there. So I had research endeavours that were less transdisciplinary. I missed that embodied learning with people in the room. And I think better theory comes out of it.

CG:

In what sense can ‘better’ theory come out of it?

TZJ:

If we’re not doing it removed from practices that we’re trying to be involved in changing. It’s trying to live those as not being separate. That’s where I think we can really do more interesting theorizing!

SH:

If we’re trying to bridge the perceived divide between the theory and practice of transdisciplinary research and more strongly articulate our conceptual and empirical insights, this is something that is currently lacking in the TDR literature. It’s so crucial, though, to see these not as two separate spheres but a hybrid one.

2.3 Summary: Breaching Research Identities

Taking roles and positions is less a matter of responsibility, a kind of social contract, and more about the kinds of positioning work (Felt et al., 2013) within transdisciplinary processes that we researchers find ourselves ‘doing’. Such work involves leaving the comfort zone of pre-defined research roles and positions, negotiating new ones that transcend prescriptions of the researcher’s identity and synchronizing multiple roles/positions that may be adopted, assumed, ascribed or resisted. As a consequence of all our breaching experiments—exposure to and interaction with different worldviews and logics, different problem definitions and so on in transdisciplinary work—our own identities are breached. Although certain qualities are useful for handling this, we cannot always know what and when these are going to be useful. Then, carving out different spaces (physical, institutional, intellectual, etc.) is integral to supporting different sorts of positioning work in order to deal with the breaching of our identities in transdisciplinary scholarship.

3 Carving Out Spaces: Anchoring Transdisciplinary Scholarship

Graduate students often express the dilemma posed by ‘growing up’ in transdisciplinary academic environments. At the same time, the lack of a disciplinary home to tap into makes one’s intellectual identity and career trajectory somewhat ambiguous (Haider et al., 2018). Felt et al. (2013) interviewed candidates in a transdisciplinary PhD programme at the University of Vienna and elicited these themes. Felt develops the term epistemic living space to describe the ‘entanglements of institutional rationales, epistemic work, life course decisions, and wider research and teaching politics’ (Felt, 2022, p. 207) that contribute to how (early career) researchers make sense of manoeuvrability in TDR. While others may ‘happily retreat to their own specific fields’ when they like, young scholars in TDR might be faced with an unclear present, and an uncertain future. There is a lack of clear incentives for transdisciplinary scholarship as the mainstream academic reward structures tend to promote disciplinary work. Transdisciplinary research work tends to be overlooked or misrepresented in ‘classic’ approaches to the evaluation of academic performance (e.g. Fochler & de Rijcke, 2017; Rafols et al., 2012) while traditional incentives for university scholarship tends to marginalize transdisciplinary work (Müller & Kaltenbrunner, 2019). PhD and post-doc contracts are often short, leaving little space to balance disciplinary academic development with the uncertain nature of transdisciplinary work. Transdisciplinarity has thus been viewed often as an ‘add-on’ rather than integral to an individual’s research practice (Schmidt & Pröpper, 2017). With more early career researchers working on explicitly transdisciplinary projects, and growing up in transdisciplinary environments, this dynamic is probably shifting (Felt et al., 2016).

Many questions we have discussed relate to the idea of socialization: what we are growing into, to what can we anchor, to what sort of intellectual communities can we subscribe and contribute. Many postgraduates note that growing up in academia doing TDR or positioning themselves as transdisciplinary scholars—might be detrimental to their research career as opposed to working and progressing within the confines of a specific discipline, which offers a clearer trajectory and fewer risks. Conducting transdisciplinary processes during one’s academic ‘training’ means less time is spent on learning and applying specific disciplinary methodologies and competencies.

3.1 Making Space for Experimenting: At Ease with the Unease of Transdisciplinary Research

How can the early career researcher deal with the friction of working in transdisciplinary settings when academic recognition is oriented towards disciplinary outputs? Perhaps we should be thinking differently about this issue of socialization. We know that current academic structures should be more inclusive of inter- and transdisciplinary research. And it is clear that different sorts of spaces need to be made to accommodate those doing transdisciplinary work.

TZJ:

The struggle from my experience has been how to get transdisciplinary STS to count as scholarship.

CG:

Less of a focus on papers as the academic product?

TZJ:

But more actually doing and being part of the research. Recognizing the intricacies of doing non-linear scholarship and knowledge production.

CG:

Right. How can that sort of recognition become instilled in an academic setting?

TZJ:

There are initiatives that seek to achieve just that. I have been part of a programme called ‘Making and Doing’ in the STS field where others agreed or felt this struggle. It became more of a question of how you get that other kind of work to count. We have attempted to infrastructure something that could do that with the Making and Doing programme (Downey & Zuiderent-Jerak, 2021). So, for instance, during making and doing programmes held at conferences, people get a 2 × 1 metre table where they can show what kind of things they’ve been involved in.

CG:

Any more instructions?

TZJ:

That’s pretty much it. And that’s the point—there is room to experiment with this set up. Contributors can show their experiments with other forms of knowledge production, expression and travel. The format allows them to express things differently, and it is interesting to consider what happens as a consequence: how have your assumptions been challenged, how has your theorizing changed? It speaks to people in that it doesn’t force them to make a choice between academic and other versions of the self. And this is especially appealing to doctoral researchers, as it means they don’t have to choose between commitments as scholars and commitments in their other ‘roles’, or other positions, other sides to oneself.

CG:

So why is getting more or different things ‘to count as scholarship’ important for understanding researchers’ positions?

SH:

I think it’s about making other kinds of important work visible. This is similar to the dual role we often assume in leading inter- and transdisciplinary processes. We have tried to establish more visibility for the many sorts of roles researchers adopt in these in-between positions. For instance, at my own institute we created a Community of Practice (CoP) in 2015, which includes current programme, platform managers, coordinators and leaders who share a common interest in leading integration at the interface between science and practice (see Hoffmann et al., 2017). The CoP meets three or four times a year. Creating such a community has been important: it provides a ‘safe’ space to jointly reflect on our shared experiences in working at the interface, the challenges and opportunities it implies; it also provides a home ground for researchers to anchor, thus countering the potential feeling of intellectual homelessness (Lyall, 2011, p. 80). I think it is really important to feel at home somewhere.

CG:

That’s important. Especially as a researcher still finding your feet, if you don’t have a clear peer community with whom you can make sense of your experiences, you can easily feel as if you are stuck in between legitimate academic spaces.

SH:

Yes, it easily produces a sense of in-betweenness; a community can counterbalance this sense, while giving greater visibility—in our case—to programme/platform managers/coordinators/leaders.

CG:

And as a collective, is this community recognized by others?

SH:

Yes, it is recognized within our institute; we interacted, for instance, with our director, who asks the CoP to discuss certain topics and issues and provide particular inputs. Conversely, we asked our director, for example, to review two scientific papers that have been written by CoP members.

CG:

Meaning you have a sort of collective voice in wider spaces.

SH:

Yes, I would say so.

3.2 Coupling the Human and Scholarly Self: On Being an Idiot, and Other Commitments

The approaches we discussed above also address the second aspect of visibility, which involves recognizing the human element of the researcher, which is so often rendered invisible in academic work. The advice of Patricia Hill Collins regarding the positioning of an ‘outsider within’ status in the social sciences seems particularly salient here. Those taking an outsider within position ‘learn to trust their own personal and cultural biographies as significant sources of knowledge. In contrast to approaches that require submerging these dimensions of self in the process of becoming an allegedly unbiased, objective social scientist, outsiders within bring these ways of knowing back into the research process’ (Collins, 1986, p. 28). Framing TDR as a boundary-crossing practice invites us to reflect more explicitly on our commitments as scholars: what exactly mandates drawing certain boundaries to perform certain empirical approaches using specific concepts and methods. Furthermore, inter- and transdisciplinarity offers a space to think carefully about the relations between the objects and subjects of research, how these are defined at the level of scientific knowledge practice of which we scholars are part. Marres and de Rijcke (2020) call for exploring the object–subject relations further in TDR. What does it mean for us to be alive to the world in the research process?

SH:

This is sometimes lacking, I mean, the focus on the human beings in the academic system. Sometimes it feels like I am surrounded by heroes and I then ask myself: where are the human beings, with all their failures and successes?

CG:

Like superheroes wearing a disguise?

TZJ:

It is important to address the performance of the academic self as a hero. I’d like to ask some idiotic questions, throw in some confusion, rather than necessarily having to solve something, or resolve a tension. And at the same time I’m so chicken when it comes to actually speaking up in a certain setting and thinking they could exclude me. But I want to build relations, and make sure they still take me seriously, although I bring a different perspective. So if you have a space in which you feel somewhat legitimized, that could be your institution, or could be people from whom you take inspiration … sometimes I’d like to dare to take a little more space. The safe space helps you to be a bit of an idiot sometimes.

CG:

Throwing in confusion sounds as though it could be unproductive. Are there certain times when it’s better to be an idiot than in others?

TZJ:

It’s not really about being confused as such, but being comfortable with not knowing where we are going in the process.

MS:

It’s about abandoning the idea of competency at some level. Accepting incompetence.Footnote 8

CG:

Right—because we are not exactly encouraged to be incompetent.

SH:

The academic system forces us to be an expert. We are trained not to ask incompetent questions.

CG:

So in terms of our positioning work, these spaces should help us take those risks—be more comfortable in more vulnerable positions perhaps—so that they offer a space to reflect and learn.

TZJ:

These different initiatives serve as examples of building infrastructure that allows for these kinds of roles and (in)competencies. So, the question is not only about how can someone ‘learn it’ but more about how can we carve out academic spaces where it is legitimate to experiment—meaning, in a broad sense, to not know exactly what you are doing. For that to be a good thing.

CG:

Legitimacy is a good term to return to here. I think a lot of postgraduate researchers can feel illegitimate because of the nature of TDR. It feels logical, to me, to assume that the space in which to experiment in very complex environments, where the stakes seem high and so on, is best reserved for those who actually do know what they’re doing. But I suppose that’s the point, carving out spaces needs to make this kind of work legitimate.

SH:

Another issue is physical and emotional exhaustion. Taking on the many roles as an inter- and transdisciplinary researcher often implies a significant workload. Moreover, being forced to navigate and manoeuvre the discrepancies between high-flown conceptualizations of an ideal-typical TDR process, and the lived experiences of numerous challenges in the process itself, only adds to this exhaustion (see Hoffmann et al., 2022). That’s where these safe spaces serve to help, to support and learn from each other and nurture new forms of reflexive scholarship.

CG:

It’s true that the human side of the scholar is rendered invisible across pretty much all disciplinary work. In what sense is it important for transdisciplinary positionality to make the human aspect more visible? Why should this be a specific comment in a book about transdisciplinary research?

JW:

Because TDR is ultimately about being relational: trying to relate to the people and fields you are trying to change. Here it is important to gain experience to begin being comfortable with ‘not knowing exactly’ about the very specific process, but learning to rely on your accumulated experience, knowledge and trust the process.

3.3 Summary: Anchoring Transdisciplinary Scholarship

We have discussed different ways of making room for TDR and the roles and qualities it demands of researchers. A transdisciplinary process breaches our identities and roles, and the carving out of safe and reflexive spaces enables us to handle the consequences; efforts to refigure institutional frameworks and boundaries to create such spaces where it is legitimate to take different positions, to experiment, and to not know exactly what you are doing. That does not mean being incompetent, but being comfortable with uncertainty, or at ease with the unease that arises from breaching experiments. There may be ways that (in)competencies can be taught to some extent. But it has as much to do with learning as it has with unlearning.

Ultimately, the themes we have discussed here may provide a loose framework relevant to the craft of empiricizing researcher roles—a much-needed element of TDR praxis. This practice is important for maintaining our scholarly commitments that include bridging between the conceptual and empirical spheres, improving our theorizing, challenging our own worldviews by being part of those things we have an interest in changing. Despite these commonalities that have brought us together in this conversation, it is important to stress that transdisciplinary scholarship needs to be heterogeneous—different in places and spaces. Working to develop our understanding of role dynamics—how roles are negotiated, ascribed and so on—provides opportunities for learning more about the fields to which we are trying to relate, as well as our own academic and analytical identities. This is critical for improving our understanding of how the relations between the subjects and objects of research become redefined in transdisciplinary knowledge practices.