Cynthia A Mitchell

• HonDTech PhD BE
• Professor at University of Technology Sydney

Synthesizing heterogeneous findings from different scientific disciplines, thematic fields, and professional sectors is considered to be a critical component of inter- and transdisciplinary research endeavors. However, little is known about the complex interplay between synthesizing heterogeneous findings, leading creative synthesis, and learning a...

Efforts to expand the delivery of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services are occurring in the context of increasing pressures on the environmental and resource systems on which WASH services depend. As such, it is imperative to explore how sustainability considerations can be made central to WASH initiatives in ways that strengthen both serv...

https://i2insights.org/2021/09/14/transdisciplinary-integration/

Integration is a key process in transdisciplinary research and knowledge co-production. Nonetheless, it is often used as a buzzword without specifying what exactly it means or what actually happens during integration. We propose conceptualizing integration as a multidimensional interactive process. We characterize it as an open-ended learning proce...

Universities across Australia and internationally are increasingly moving toward implementing innovative frameworks for teaching and learning to facilitate cross, inter and trans-disciplinary forms of education to produce graduates able to meet the challenges of a transforming world. Such programs are characterized by experimental learning and rese...

Recent developments in high- and middle-income countries have exhibited a shift from conventional urban water systems to alternative solutions that are more diverse in source separation, decentralization, and modularization. These solutions include non-grid, small-grid, and hybrid systems to address such pressing global challenges as climate change...

Julie Thompson Klein’s contributions to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research have enriched the way collaboration is discussed and handled by introducing concepts of boundary work and boundary crossing from the field of Science and Technology Studies. In recent years, she has been integrating those concepts into crossdisciplinarity, an e...

Abstract: Ten Australians and one New Zealander provide reflections on the influence of Julie Thompson Klein’s work on and in inter- and trans- disciplinarity. Even taking into account that this article is based on a small number of contributions from only one corner of the world, the reflections demonstrate the influence of a diverse array of Klei...

This special volume of Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies is the first volume of critical essays on the work of scholar Julie Thompson Klein. Guest edited by Tanya Augsburg

A growing number of facilitators and educators in the field of sustainability are coalescing around the idea of ‘transformative sustainability learning’ and its potential to foster more sustainable ways of being and becoming. This strengthening notion of transformative sustainability learning involves internal transformations, as well as external c...

Based on close to 20 years of experience in offering transdisciplinary research degrees, and undertaking transdisciplinary research, we provide a new framing for meaningful assessment of transdisciplinary doctoral theses. We propose and demonstrate the application of quality criteria that align with transdisciplinary research evaluation: - Substant...

Practitioners of transdisciplinary inquiry, which we define to include research, learning, collaboration, and action, encounter innumerable tensions. Some tensions are universal, while others are unique to that particular inquiry at that point in time. Resolving these tensions requires innovative practices, which emerge through experience with tran...

Transdisciplinary (TD) research is increasingly recognized as a crucial response to global environmental and social challenges. To support this response, there is a growing need to create spaces where graduate researchers can learn the skills and dispositions needed for effective TD research. One way to develop such skills and dispositions is by bu...

Perceptions and cognitive bias in relation to reuse water can influence the responses to risk and reward. Much has been written on community perspectives and risk perceptions with regard to recycled water for non-potable use. This paper is distinct in that it focuses on the scheme proponents and those involved in designing and delivering schemes. A...

Public health benefits are often a key political driver of urban sanitation investment in developing countries, however, pathogen flows are rarely taken systematically into account in sanitation investment choices. While several tools and approaches on sanitation and health risks have recently been developed, this research identified gaps in their...

This chapter expands and enriches existing characterisations and premises of strong transdisciplinarity to develop the concept of “Transforming Transdisciplinarity”. Erich Jantsch’s, Basarab Nicolescu’s, and Manfred Max-Neef’s notions of strong transdisciplinarity all aim to stretch, transcend or reconstruct the Cartesian-Newtonian paradigm. Other...

Currently, our societies have extraordinary momentum towards unfathomable manifestations of unsustainability (Steffen et al. 2015, Rockström et al. 2016, Hanson et al. 2017). The root causes of unsustainability are many and complex. However, an argument has be made that unsustainability can ultimately be understood through the interactions between...

In TD processes, we are challenged by complex mixes of paradigms, posing both opportunities and risks, with consequences on communicative processes and results. How might we explore diverse stakeholders’/disciplines’ worldviews? What can we learn and share from each other’s approaches, tools, methods, processes, tips and tricks for meta-reflection...

The Planetary Boundaries (PB) framework represents a significant advance in specifying the ecological constraints on human development. However, to enable decision-makers in business and public policy to respect these constraints in strategic planning, the PB framework needs to be developed to generate practical tools. With this objective in mind,...

Local recycled water (LRW) can potentially contribute to resilient and sustainable urban water services critical to liveable cities. Investment in these systems has increased rapidly in Australia in the past 10 years, yet public and private investment in these systems can still be difficult, complex, costly and risky. An in depth case study analysi...

The framework presented in this paper offers an alternative starting point for transdisciplinary research projects seeking to create change. The framework begins at the end: it distinguishes three distinct ‘transdisciplinary outcome spaces’ and proposes articulating their content for purposive transdisciplinary research projects. Defining upfront t...

Designers are increasingly engaged in solving large-scale societal issues and the interest in the potentially activist role of design is growing. These new roles call for judicious approaches to designing and, importantly, for designers to be critically aware of how their work influences, not only our physical, but also our social worlds. This pape...

The public health objective of sanitation is to reduce the risk of negative health outcomes from faecal contamination. For water-based sanitation systems at the household and community scale as practised in Indonesia and perhaps elsewhere, the liquid component of the effluent comprises a significant pathogen hazard. While increasing attention is pa...

Much can be learned from the numerous water recycling schemes currently in operation in Australia, especially with respect to making investment decisions based on uncertain assumptions. This paper illustrates through a number of case studies, that by considering the contextual and project related risks, a range of business related risks become appa...

How we think and talk about sanitation services has changed. The very notion of a sanitation service has been transformed from one focused on technology to one focused on the sustainability of the wider sanitation system. This paper explores the transformation from technology to system by drawing from a review of more than 200 pieces of literature...

The framework presented in this paper offers an alternative starting point for transdisciplinary research projects seeking to create change. The framework begins at the end: it distinguishes three distinct 'transdisciplinary outcome spaces' and proposes articulating their content for purposive transdisciplinary research projects. Defining upfront t...

The framework presented in this paper offers an alternative starting point for transdisciplinary research projects seeking to create change. The framework begins at the end: it distinguishes three distinct ‘transdisciplinary outcome spaces’ and proposes articulating their content for purposive transdisciplinary research projects. Defining upfront t...

Water recycling has played a role in our urban water landscape for over 30 years. In the last decade, driven by a confluence of interrelated factors such as drought, subsidies, treated wastewater disposal and sustainability interests, Australia has seen significant development in recycling and an increase in active schemes. The drive to improve urb...

The water demand and water use practices of each community are different. Designing cost-effective demand management programs requires investigating and responding directly to the unique water issues and opportunities of each community (Turner et al., 2010). As presented in this paper, a ‘mixedmethod baseline analysis’ has proven to be valuable i...

Recycled water has increasingly been considered as a means to deal with water supply-demand imbalances, treated wastewater disposal and stormwater management. It contributes to the sustainability of urban water systems and the regeneration of the urban landscape. However, recycled water schemes are not mainstream, and are often confronted with nume...

In Melbourne, Australia, a shift is occurring in the approach to wastewater management. With increased pressure from landscape drivers such as population growth, urbanisation, and over a decade of extended drought conditions, a new model of wastewater management is being explored by Melbourne’s metropolitan water utilities in the development of the...

This paper describes a decision-making framework created to develop long term adaptive water supply and demand strategies to respond to future contextual uncertainties, such as climate change and urbanisation. Whilst there are various theoretical methods for decision making under uncertainty, they generally have not been applied to the water sector...

Water resource managers are faced with planning for an uncertain future constrained by limited knowledge of how demands will change in future and what supplies will be available to match them. By adopting an adaptive management approach, flexible and robust responses can be developed as new information comes to hand. A transparent approach has b...

This paper discusses a urine diversion (UD) trial implemented within the institutional setting of the University of Technology Sydney that sought to identify key issues for public UD and reuse systems at scale in the Australian urban context. The trial was novel in its transdisciplinary action research approach, that included consideration of urine...

This paper investigates the process of organisational learning in decision making and planning for sustainability in the water sector. A Melbourne water utility (Yarra Valley Water) trialling sustainable systems of service provision utilised multi-stakeholder experiences to facilitate learning within the organisation. Diverse perspectives of the tr...

Water planners are familiar with some form of variability in climate and demand. However, the uncertainty associated with the frequency and magnitude of the variations, coupled with broader performance expectations, means that long term deterministic planning needs to give way to a new approach. The structured adaptive planning process proposed in...

Urine diversion (UD) has great potential to contribute to sustainably managing wastewater by separating urine at the source and recovering nutrients for reuse in agriculture. While factors enabling the UD technology in Sweden are thought to involve policies supporting nutrient recovery/reuse, on closer inspection, the variable success of UD systems...

Today's urban water managers are faced with an unprecedented set of issues that call for a different approach to urban water management. These include the urgent changes needed to respond to climate change, population growth, growing resource constraints, and rapidly increasing global urbanization. Solving the water problems of tomorrow cannot be d...

Today's urban water managers are faced with an unprecedented set of issues that call for a different approach to urban water management. These include the urgent changes needed to respond to climate change, population growth, growing resource constraints, and rapidly increasing global urbanization. Not only are these issues difficult to address, bu...

It is challenging to make decisions about sanitation scale and technology choice for urban areas, however costing analyses have an important role to play in assisting determination of the most appropriate systems for a given context. The most appropriate technological system is the one that finds a locally acceptable balance between social (e.g., p...

While incremental change and optimisation of existing sanitation systems will undoubtedly provide environmental efficiencies in the process of wastewater management, long term sustainability may only be possible though system innovation or the large scale transformation of the way the wastewater system is managed and the service is provided. Analys...

Alternative scales and models of sewage management are increasingly being sought by both public and private organisations. Driven by the impact of excessive water withdrawal, sewage discharges and associated environmental affects, decentralized/distributed systems of wastewater management are emerging as a new paradigm complimentary to conventional...

Despite the obvious health benefits of the sanitary revolution and construction of sewered systems, there are increasing doubts about the long term sustainability of centralised, water-based sanitation. Growing uncertainties such as rapid population growth, emergence of new pollutants, changing hydrological conditions in relation to climate change...

Sanitary infrastructure is in particular need of life cycle management in planning for the future, as explicated further below. This extended abstract discusses the initiative of metropolitan water authorities in Melbourne, a city of about 4 million people in south eastern Australia, to incorporate life cycle thinking in moving towards a future-res...

Sustainability is a wicked problem that requires a transdisciplinary approach. The defining characteristics of transdisciplinarity include collaborative, creative, higher order thinking which transcends discipline boundaries, the explicit contribution of an ethical or moral perspective to problem resolution, and the generation of new knowledge and...

Institutional arrangements – formal and informal processes, policies, regulations, and norms that govern approvals (design, construction and operation), ownership, management, pricing, performance accountability and responsibility for on-site and decentralised wastewater systems – are critical determinants for the success or failure of small scale...

Abstract

The economic principles and tools that are commonly applied to recover costs for urban water and sanitation arise from the dominant perspective of neo-classical economics, with its emphasis on ‘full cost pricing’ based on the ‘user pays’ principle. Kumudini Abeysuriya, Cynthia Mitchell and Juliet Willetts examine two other qualitatively different e...

This study documents variation in engineering academics conceptions of sustainability. We investigated how a group of Australian engineering academics described environmental, social and economic sustainability, and identified a broad range of actions that participating academics associated with achieving sustainability. The study suggested marked...

The existing state of sanitation in developing Asian countries fails to deliver a level of service that is adequate for meeting the human right to a standard of living consistent with dignity and health, or for sustaining the capacity for future generations to have access to clean water resources and healthy ecosystems. We argue that translating th...

Decentralised systems have the potential to provide a viable option for long term sustainable management of household wastewater. Yet, at present, such systems hold an uncertain status and are frequently omitted from consideration. Their potential can only be realised with improved approaches to their management, and improved methods to decision-ma...

The recognition that natural resources and their processes support human society underpins the notion of sustainability. Key players that are engaged with balancing natural resource protection and use include: Catchment Management Authorities (CMAs); local, state and federal regulators; resource managers and policy-makers; and industrial, agricultu...

The water industry in Australia and international is involved in a period of significant change. The conventional roles of water and wastewater utilities are being redefined with the objectives of resource conservation and sustainable development added to existing responsibilities. Least cost planning (LCP) has emerged as the way forward for water...

Metaphors can be powerful teaching and learning tools which may help us to understand novel, complex or abstract concepts using familiar language and thought structures. Academics routinely use metaphors in their university teaching to explain new or difficult ideas to students. In this arti-cle the authors argue that tertiary teachers' metaphors f...

This paper utilises a 'community of practice' model to reflect on the post- graduate research program at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS. Our work at the Institute involves resolution of complex problems in today's so- ciety, a task which requires insights generated through multiple disciplines. Over the last five years we have conducted...

Electrocoagulation is an electrochemical method of treating polluted water whereby sacrificial anodes corrode to release active coagulant precursors (usually aluminium or iron cations) into solution. Accompanying electrolytic reactions evolve gas (usually as hydrogen bubbles) at the cathode. Electrocoagulation has a long history as a water treatmen...

The New Model of Teaching, Learning and PracticeThe New Model ExpertImplications for Practice, Teaching and LearningThe Honest Broker in Practice: Back to the Future

There are three demand management responses to imbalances in water demand and supply: conserve water, substitute potable water with a different source, and augment existing supplies. Of these, water conservation is both the most cost-effective and the most resource-use-effective i.e. it saves materials and energy required for treatment, distributio...

Methods to measure protein, exopolysaccharide, viable cell number and INT reduction activity were tested on biofilm growing in a wastewater batch reactor. They were shown to be meaningful indicators of biofilm growth and correlated well with each other. Protein, exopolysaccharide, viable cells and INT reduction rates increased linearly over time. V...

Electrocoagulation removes pollutant material from water by a combination of coagulant delivered from a sacrificial aluminium anode and hydrogen bubbles evolved at an inert cathode. Rates of clay particle flotation and settling were experimentally determined in a 7 L batch reactor over a range of currents (0.25-2.0 A) and pollutant loadings (0.1-1....

The Australian and international water industry is on the verge of significant change, and a significant opportunity to embrace sustainability in its operations. The paper shows how a combination of forecasting and backcasting is necessary for predicting a water service provision model of the future. Using some real examples, we demonstrate how act...

A renewed interest in electrocoagulation has been spurred by the search for reliable, cost-effective water treatment processes. This technology delivers the coagulant in situ as the sacrifcial anode corrodes, due to an applied potential, while the simultaneous evolution of hydrogen at the cathode allows for pollutant removal by flotation. By compar...

Engineering professionals in Australia and internationally are coming under increased pressure to practise engineering more sustainably. In response to this pressure, the Institution of Engineers, Australia, has updated the procedure for accreditation of the engineering baccalaureate to ensure inclusion of sustainability learning. In order to gradu...

Electrocoagulation treats water by delivering coagulant from a sacrificial anode (aluminium) in an electrochemical cell. Hydrogen is evolved from the inert cathode. In the batch electrocoagulation reactor numerous interactions occur with settling and flotation identified as the dominant removal paths. Current determines both coagulant dosage and bu...