Generating and using evidence has never been an easy task. But what makes it extra hard, when we try to address interconnected health-environmental challenges? Public health emergencies such as the Covid Pandemic, climate change, obesity epidemics, all show that our current tools for generating evidence are insufficient. Transdisciplinary research approaches at the intersection of public health and sustainability science are showing new ways of generating evidence in practice. Yet, these are undertheorized. On the one hand, the notion of evidence is often used as a black box (such as when talking about evidence-based solutions or evidence-based policies). On the other hand, often the notion is considered as obsolete or too deterministic to account for the complexities of transdisciplinary knowledge co-production processes and actions.

In this contribution, we present a notion of evidence that is based on and serves transdisciplinary approaches addressing interconnected health-environmental challenges. These challenges are timely and relevant, and likely to frequently occur in the near future. We synthesise our approach in the phrase ‘HOW is WHO’, to signal that the modes of explanation and of action to address interconnected challenges (the HOW), is deeply interconnected with the various actors involved (the WHO). While the importance of actors will be no news to transdisciplinary scholars, we submit that the way we reconstruct the intertwinement with the HOW is extremely important when we think about and theorise evidence in participatory and action-oriented research.

We sketch the contours of an approach to evidence that supports decision-making and action-oriented research. We do this through the idea of ‘evidence as clues’, like in a crossword puzzle, inspired by the approach of philosopher and legal theory Susan Haack. This view helps address several aspects of evidence: it relates to worlds and also to our beliefs, it is a product of social processes and institutional constraints and also of modelling practices, it requires that researchers interact with citizens/patients/policy makers. With this approach, we can connect the ‘WHO’ and the ‘HOW’. We can account for the role agents play in the process of generating and using knowledge, and this is highly intertwined with the processes in which we fit clues and existing entries.

Thinking about evidence as clues for action in collaborative and participatory research, we hope, may help trans-disciplinary scholars to develop methodological and procedural approaches to integrating the mutual learning processes that underpin transdisciplinary research processes with more objectivist modes of explanations about the world.

Boundary work in academic activities is both useful and obstructive. On one hand, there has been significant practical and theoretical effort to overcome academic boundaries, as demarcations are often ideological and frame a political academic standpoint (cf. Gieryn, 1983). For participatory or interdisciplinary research, it is nearly common sense that boundaries should be reflected upon to facilitate collaborations and deal with different knowledge bases. On the other hand, academia has learned from recent multiple crises that scientific knowledge must be protected against encroachment from phenomena such as ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’. Boundaries delineating academic activities and defining their scope are becoming a necessity to shape science in terms of knowledge transfer and transformation through exchange.

Boundaries are the results of dynamic negotiation processes. They are to be understood more as shared spaces than concrete borders (Susan Leigh Star). Different methodological concepts, ranging from boundary objects (cf. Leigh Star, 1988), travelling concepts (cf. Bal, 2002), to actor networks (Bruno Latour), seek to define the practical interactions between different knowledge bases. These concepts, originating from engaged empirical researchers, aim to understand collaborations between differences and encounters. What do they offer us today in times of crisis of academic knowledge? And when transdisciplinary and participatory research approaches are seen as the future for addressing societal challenges, where do we, as individuals working in and with TDR, have to draw the line? Moreover, where is it essential to create contact zones between academia and non-academic (future) partners?

In my brief theoretical overview, I seek to re-examine various dynamic knowledge concepts from an anthropological point of view: I assume that academic knowledge is confronted with a ‘vote of confidence’ regarding expertise and academic knowledge. Therefore, I aim to expand upon the referenced concepts and identify a space of possibilities between closing and opening knowledge in participatory research requirements. This space delineates a field of negotiation where differences become dynamic and hybrid. Through two practical examples from research projects in Berlin, I would like to illustrate how this space, which lies within different knowledge concepts, can be made fruitful for transdisciplinary approaches.

Convergence has been at the heart of recent efforts to encourage crossdisciplinary synthesis within several programs funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), including Growing Convergence Research (GCR) and the Convergence Accelerator. By encouraging crossdisciplinary synthesis, these programs encourage substantive responses to grand challenges confronting humanity in the 21st century. NSF defines convergence research as involving “deep integration across disciplines” that is driven by a “specific and compelling problem” (NSF 2024). Meaningful convergence requires working out how different researchers and their perspectives relate to one another, and in particular where they are similar and where they differ. Convergence research is difficult due, in part, to the contextual nature of convergence projects (cf. Klein 2012) and a lack of training in conducting it (Lélé & Norgaard 2005). Experts are trained in their own domains, but they are not typically trained to integrate their expertise with that of others in ways that are responsive to the specific and variable characteristics of their research and the team. The NSF GCR program, in particular, encourages the creation of a convergence culture that emphasizes supporting relationship building and information transfer through dynamic communication, building common ground through deep integration, establishing a shared language, and extending that culture beyond the team.

This presentation will discuss findings from the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI) Center’s work convergence teams funded by the NSF GCR Program, deriving specifically from exploratory research to identify convergence practices and processes that support a convergence culture. TDI Center has been conducting structured dialogue-based workshops with newly funded GCR teams since 2020 (N=20 teams), employing the Toolbox dialogue method, an evidence-informed facilitation approach developed by TDI, to surface implicit perspectives for joint consideration and coordination by complex, crossdisciplinary research teams (Hubbs et al. 2020). We collected data from the Toolbox dialogue-based workshops with each funded cohort from 2020-2023, from interviews with project leaders in the mid-to-late stage of their funding (N=20), and from a survey of project team members of funded projects at all stages of funding (N=200) in 2024. All data were collected virtually, with Zoom video conferencing used for the Toolbox workshops and interviews, and Qualtrics online software for the surveys. Our findings identify the barriers faced by convergence research teams and illustrate how team leaders and teams are being intentional in fostering a convergence culture that exhibits a commitment to epistemic humility, mutual understanding, and shared learning.

Hubbs, G., O’Rourke, M., Orzack, S. H. (Eds.). (2020). The Toolbox Dialogue Initiative: The Power of Cross-Disciplinary Practice. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

Klein, J. T. (2012). Research integration: A comparative knowledge base. In A. F. Repko, W. W. Newell, & R. Szostak (Eds.), Case studies in interdisciplinary research (pp. 283-298). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Lele, S., Norgaard, R. B. (2005). Practicing interdisciplinarity. BioScience 55: 967-975.

National Science Foundation (NSF). (2024). Growing Convergence Research (GCR): Program Page. Available online: https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/growing-convergence-research-gcr