Abstract
We’ve got to integrate; but how?! While knowledge integration is considered a key characteristic of interdisciplinarity, it is also widely acknowledged as one of its biggest mysteries and challenges. We may not be able to provide a recipe, but how can we learn to cook?
In this workshop, we’ll peek inside the black box of knowledge integration. Through engaging in creative exercises, participants will reflect on their own experiences with knowledge integration. The insights that emerge from those reflections as well as the experiences with the creative exercises are intended to support participants in future integration processes. While knowledge integration is contextual, complex and open-ended, reflective practices can help foster conditions for knowledge integration. Besides practicing with tools that participants can bring home, we’ll also share insights from ongoing action research into knowledge integration processes in interdisciplinary collaboration practices at the Centre for Unusual Collaboration.
Workshop outline
Knowledge integration is often considered a key characteristic of inter- and transdisciplinary research, distinguishing it from other forms of cross-disciplinary approaches such as multidisciplinarity (Klein 2017; Pohl et al. 2021). As such, conducting inter- and transdisciplinary research demands knowledge integration in practice. However, integration is often highly challenging and a bottleneck to engage in inter- and transdisciplinary research (Godemann 2008; Lawrence et al. 2022; Cairns, Hielscher, and Light 2020). Therefore, guiding, leading, supporting, and facilitating inter- and transdisciplinary research asks for support in knowledge integration (Hoffmann, Weber, and Mitchell 2022). Several tools and approaches that support knowledge integration processes in practice have been developed and are described in the literature, such as the CoNavigator tool (Lindvig, Hillersdal, and Earle 2017) and Dialogue Toolbox (Hubbs, O’Rourke, and Orzack 2021; Eigenbrode et al. 2007), and step-wise integration process detailed by Repko & Szostak (2020). However, integration is also understood as a complex, open-ended, contextual, and plural phenomenon (Pohl et al. 2021), that can be described in terms of its inputs, processes and outcomes (O’Rourke, Crowley, and Gonnerman 2016). This raises the question how to support inter- and transdisciplinary teams in knowledge integration by providing practical support while also doing justice to this complex and plural understanding of knowledge integration.
The Centre for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) also observed challenges with knowledge integration in the inter- and transdisciplinary projects they support. CUCo provides training, coaching, and tools to the teams that they support through seed funding (Spark) and funding for research projects (UCo). The CUCo training and support underscores disciplinary grounding, perspective taking, common ground and integration as key processes and competencies. Especially in relation to how to ‘do’ as well as stimulate, facilitate and support integration many questions remain. Challenges among the Spark and UCo team include: how to bring together knowledges that are far removed rom each other, how to organize and ensure integration as a continuous process throughout the projects, and how to ensure integration (degrees, forms) that are appropriate for research objectives. In response to those observations, CUCo decided to make knowledge integration a central theme in 2024 and we conducted accompanying action research on how integration emerges and can be further facilitated and supported in unusual collaborations.
For the ITD conference, we provide a 90-minute workshop based on interactive workshops about knowledge integration that we ran with UCo and Spark teams in March 2024. We take the metaphor of “knowledge integration as cooking” as a red thread. How can distinct ingredients be turned into a cohesive and tasty dish, and how can one engage in and learn this art beyond recipe following? As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, participants to the ITD workshop will be put to work to engage in reflections on inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge integration. Moreover, we will provide preliminary insights from our experiences with the Spark and UCo teams to inform participants of the workshop about the insights on knowledge integration that those sessions brought us. Representatives of Spark and/or UCo teams will be present and actively participate in the workshop to share their experiences with knowledge integration as well as more generally with engaging in ‘unusual collaboration’.
The workshop will be offered with roughly the following schedule:
1. Opening and introduction
- Introduction to the CUCo approach
- Introduction to interdisciplinary knowledge integration in unusual collaborations
- Rationale behind and goals for the workshop
2. WHAT do you integrate? - Interactive “building blocks”-based exercise on making sense of, and reflecting on, experienced team diversity and its implications for collaboration and integration.
3. WHO integrates? - interactive exercise on organizing integration responsibility in inter- and transdisciplinary teamwork.
4. HOW to integrate? - interactive exercise on aspired and actual degrees of knowledge integration and reflection on their implications for knowledge integration and collaboration.
5. Joint reflection and preliminary insights:
- participants to the workshop are invited to reflect on their experiences with the interactive activities about the WHAT, WHO and HOW of knowledge integration in inter- and transdisciplinary teamwork.
- Participants from UCo and Spark teams share their experiences.
- The organizers share some aggregated insights from all UCo and Spark teams based on the sessions in March 2024.
6. Wrap-up
Through this set-up we aim to bring participants to the workshop the following:
- The opportunity to engage in reflection on knowledge integration practices in their own inter- and transdisciplinary research activities;
- Inspiration on creative tooling for reflection on inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge integration that they may want to also implement in their own inter- and transdisciplinary research context; and
- Insight into inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge integration practices by exchange with and learning from the experiences of other participants in the workshop and the UCo and Spark teams.
This workshop is offered in a collaboration between Annemarie Horn and CUCo. Annemarie Horn is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University who studies practices of inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration and integration in projects and teams. She conducts – among others – research in the context of the UCo and Spark teams that receive support from CUCo. From CUCo, Anke de Vrieze is involved in her role of Knowledge and Learning Officer. The collaborative nature of this workshop is also representative of the collaborative nature of this research and its dual goal of improving as well as understanding knowledge integration practices in inter- and transdisciplinary teamwork. This collaboration allows us to combine the practical knowledge, experiences, and creative tooling from CUCo with empirical analysis and theoretical underpinnings from the research perspective.
References
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Godemann, Jasmin. 2008. “Knowledge Integration: A Key Challenge for Transdisciplinary Cooperation.” Environmental Education Research 14 (6): 625–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620802469188.
Hoffmann, Sabine, Christine Weber, and Cynthia Mitchell. 2022. “Principles for Leading, Learning, and Synthesizing in Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research.” BioScience 72 (10): 963–77. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac057.
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Lawrence, Mark G., Stephen Williams, Patrizia Nanz, and Ortwin Renn. 2022. “Characteristics, Potentials, and Challenges of Transdisciplinary Research.” One Earth 5 (1): 44–61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.12.010.
Lindvig, Katrine, Line Hillersdal, and David Earle. 2017. “Interdisciplinary Tool Helps Fast-Track Interdisciplinary Learning and Collaboration.” Integrative Pathways 39 (2): 3–6.
O’Rourke, Michael, Stephen Crowley, and Chad Gonnerman. 2016. “On the Nature of Cross-Disciplinary Integration: A Philosophical Framework.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 56 (April): 62–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2015.10.003.
Pohl, Christian, Julie Thompson Klein, Sabine Hoffmann, Cynthia Mitchell, and Dena Fam. 2021. “Conceptualising Transdisciplinary Integration as a Multidimensional Interactive Process.” Environmental Science & Policy 118 (April): 18–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.12.005.
Repko, Allen F., and Rick Szostak. 2020. Interdisciplinary Research Process and Theory. 4th ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
