Conference Agenda

In this 60 minute panel discussion we will present and discuss the findings from the Undisciplined project, a recent programme of co-produced work conducted by the Research on Research Institute (RoRI). RoRI is an international consortium of researchers, funders and data providers. Our mission is to accelerate transformative research on research systems, cultures and decision-making. Our panel session at the ITD conference will reflect RoRI’s co-productive working model and consist of researchers and research funders who took part in Undisciplined; which investigates how transdisciplinary research (TDR) is defined and evaluated in a number of TDR research funding programmes.

Description of the session/workshop design

This session is practically oriented and designed to share learning from a project investigating how funders deliver TDR programmes, with a dual focus on how TDR is defined and classified and how peer reviewers are guided in evaluating research proposals of this type. The session will consist of five 5 minute presentations: firstly the research team will present the aims, process and findings of the Undisciplined project followed by four presentations by research funders giving insight into TDR funding programmes. The funder presentations will be based on organisational case studies which featured in the Undisciplined project and tackled questions such as: ‘When setting up this TDR funding programme, how important was it to define transdisciplinary research? And what definition(s) did you use?’ The presentations will be followed by a 30 minute discussion with the audience and panel.

Background

Collaboration between researchers and users in producing and combining different types of knowledge is nothing new., But in research environments and cultures that remain largely geared towards mono-disciplinary work, it is increasingly recognised that single disciplinary approaches are ill equipped to address complex, interconnected challenges. Different approaches have arisen in response to this using multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches. Transdisciplinary research not only integrates expertise from across academic disciplines, but also involves users and stakeholders in the design stage, and throughout the research process. Of particular relevance to RoRI is the increasing role of research funders in devising and delivering TDR programmes and the impact of this enhanced role on knowledge use., In this project we investigate and compare support for, practice, definitions and evaluation of TDR from a funder’s perspective, across different research systems.

Research project and methods

The questions, methods and outputs of the project were decided through discussions within the project Working Group which consists of representatives of RoRI’s partners (research funders) and researchers from Leiden and UCL Universities. The project was conducted in a recursive fashion, moving from discussions within the working group, to the literature, to collection and analysis of secondary evidence and primary data. The project adhered to the governance and reporting frameworks of RoRI and was overseen by the RoRI Partnership Board.

The Undisciplined project consists of two modules of work. The first investigates how funders define and classify TD research, the second focuses on methods of evaluating TDR proposals and explores how to better support reviewers and commissioners in this task. The first module has three distinct elements: a literature review, analysis of funding solicitation documents for 6 funding programmes, and a set of organisational case studies describing specific TDR funding schemes. These elements were collated and discussed in a project working paper. This process was also mediated through a mid-project workshop of researchers and funders who shed light on early findings, and discussed key literature. These activities informed the design of the case studies and documents analysis. The second module of work centres on two elements, the collation of guidance provided to evaluators of transdisciplinary research proposals, and a set of in-depth interviews with a sample of peer reviewers (in both practice and research roles). This piece of work is exploratory in nature and produced a collation of the different tools funders use to evaluate TDR proposals, and insight into reviewers’ perspectives on these processes including barriers and facilitators to their use.

Likely impact

The project is ongoing at the time of writing. However, we strongly anticipate, due to the project’s co-produced methods, that the findings will contribute useful evidence for RoRI’s funder partners and the research funding community, in addition to wider stakeholders interested in transdisciplinary research. All RoRI’s outputs are open access thereby minimising barriers to the discovery and use of our work.