Sabine Hoffmann

• Doctor of Development Studies
• Eawag, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

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...

Theory of Change (ToC) has been promoted as a useful tool in sustainability research for visioning, planning, communication, monitoring, evaluation and learning. It involves a mapping of steps towards a desired long-term goal supplemented with continuous reflection on how and why change is expected to happen in a particular context. However, there...

Integration is often considered the core challenge and the defining characteristic of inter- and trans-disciplinary (ITD) research. Given its importance, it is surprising that the current system of higher education does not provide permanent positions for integration experts; i.e., experts who lead, administer, manage, monitor, assess, accompany, a...

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...

This paper focuses on the critical role of integrative leadership in inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) research programs. ITD programs have become one of academia’s responses to address contemporary sustainability challenges. Fulfilling the promise of such programs is extraordinarily challenging for all involved participants, but especially for pr...

Science integration and a participatory scenario process. An inter-and transdisciplinary study from the Alps Highly engineered Alpine watersheds and forests face growing risks, requiring shifts in management and research. We use science inte gra tion and a participatory scenario process to integrate disciplines and co-create knowledge with stakehol...

To increase the societal impact of environmental governance research, scholars have called for knowledge cumulation, meaning that scientific evidence builds more systematically on previous findings. Our article develops the perspective that such knowledge cumulation takes place not only within academia but also at science-policy interfaces (SPIs)....

Inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) research is increasingly called for and supported to promote sustainable transformation through knowledge co-production, knowledge integration, and solution development. The paper explores what is needed to support researchers in reflecting on their new roles in ITD research. We introduce a reflection tool that ma...

The largely negative impacts of human activities on social-ecological systems are becoming increasingly apparent. Efforts to address these impacts require effective knowledge exchange among researchers and decision-makers to facilitate evidence-informed decision-making processes. Despite this, however, examples of achieving effective knowledge exch...

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 ‘transformatio...

Calls for supporting sustainability through more and better research rest on an incomplete understanding of scientific evidence use. We argue that a variety of barriers to a transformative impact of evidence arises from diverse actor motivations within different stages of evidence use. We abductively specify this variety in policy and practice aren...

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

The term ‘decentralisation’ is widely used across different disciplines when studying sanitation systems. There are, however, different implicit conceptions of when and how the term should be used. To make these conceptions explicit, a workshop was conducted within the strategic inter- and transdisciplinary research program Wings (Water and sanita...

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...

Recent empirical studies show a persistent gap between ‘socially robust’ knowledge produced by transdisciplinary research projects and its ability to promote change on a large scale. Current discourses about the ‘project-to-science-and-practice-at-large gap’ have focused mainly on exploring various conditions that need to be fulfilled to produce ‘s...

Research and policy processes in many fields, such as sustainability and health, are increasingly relying on transdisciplinary cooperation among a multitude of governmental, nongovernmental, and private actors from local to global levels. In the absence of hierarchical chains of command, multistakeholder governance may accommodate conflicting or di...

An increasing number of knowledge brokers work at the interface between research, policy and practice. Their function is to facilitate processes to foster mutual learning among research, policy and practice. For some knowledge brokers, practical methodologies to assess the quality of their work is an important concern. While frameworks exist for as...

What methods and procedures support transdisciplinary knowledge integration? We address this question by exploring knowledge integration within four thematic synthesis processes of the Swiss National Research Programme 61 Sustainable Water Management (NRP 61). Drawing on literature from inter- and transdisciplinary research, we developed an analyti...

What challenges do researchers face when leading transdisciplinary integration? We address this question by analyzing transdisciplinary integration within four thematic synthesis processes of the Swiss National Research Programme (NRP 61) on Sustainable Water Management. We adapt an existing analytical framework to compare transdisciplinary integra...

The top priorities for urban water sustainability include the provision of safe drinking water, wastewater handling for public health, and protection against flooding. However, rapidly aging infrastructure, population growth, and increasing urbanization call into question current urban water management strategies, especially in the fast-growing urb...

An economic approach to ecosystem services provision and biodiversity conservation may add a rationale for addressing conservation objectives in the policy sphere. It also has the potential to raise additional funding sources through market-based instruments. However, it is important to clearly take into account and communicate the challenges and l...

There are few concepts that are more central to natural resource management than those of property and property rights. Given their importance, it might be expected that there would be some consensus in the economic literature about what property and property rights are. However, no such consensus seems to exist. In fact, different authors use the...

Applied research and expert consulting are conducted at research institu tions and universities that are supported by public investment. This is often justified on the basis of anticipated societal benefits. Thus it is incumbent on the institu tions that conduct these activities to develop a sound basis for the assess ment of their bene fits and to...

The significance of organic matter origin for carbon oxidation via sulfate and iron reduction in the sediments of three acid mine lakes is analyzed. Carbon reactivity was estimated by fitting first-order expressions to measured rates. Carbon oxidation rates via sulfate and ferric iron reduction ranged from 3.4 to 4.7 mmol m–2 d–1 and resembled thos...

A combination of rate measurements of iron(III)oxide and sulfate reduction, thermodynamic data, and pore-water and solid phase analyses was used to evaluate the relative significance of iron and sulfate reduction in the sediments of an acidic strip mining lake (Lake 116, Brandenburg, Germany). The rate of sulfate reduction was determined using a 35...