Intrepid COST Action - Interdisciplinarity in research programming and funding cycles

About the book Enabling the City is a collaborative book that focuses on how interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary processes of knowledge production may contribute to urban transformation at a local level in the 21st Century. It is designed to respond to the growing appeal for transformative change, by exploring the often inconvenient and uncomfortable spaces of knowledge production and co-creation that can make such change happen. Combining global trends in theory with experience of local practice, Enabling the City strikes a balance between enthusiastic support for such transformational potential and a cautious note regarding the persistent challenges to the ethos as well as the practice of inter and transdisciplinarity. The rich stories reflect different research and local practice cultures, exploring issues such as wellbeing and ageing, community, health and dementia, public space, energy, mobility cultures, heritage, housing, re-use, and renewal, as well as more universal questions about urban sustainability and climate change, and perhaps most importantly, education and competences. Against this backdrop, aspirations for the 21st century are related to the international, national, and local agendas expressed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in the New Urban Agenda (NUA), raising fundamental questions of how to enable development. The reflexive approach that runs through the book aims to respond to international, national and local agendas, offering new forms of understanding collaborative process and ways of knowing that are essential in urban research and practice. Enabling the City translates the lessons learned from these studies into a comprehensive framework of four phases of inter- and transdisciplinarity, and four enabling conditions and qualities that are crucial to such collaborative processes, highlighting aspects of learning, competences and dispositions: knowing what phases are critical in any collaborative and participatory process and making an early effort to allocate human and financial resources as well as time to each phase; and valuing and enabling mutual and transformative learning, and the dispositions of trust and humility - will make a world of difference. Through these European, multi-scale accounts, this book will inspire scholars and practitioners alike to strive for transformative solutions for more sustainable urban futures. Open access content is available https://www.routledge.com/Enabling-the-City-Interdisciplinary-and-Transdisciplinary-Encounters-in/Fokdal-Bina-Chiles-Ojamae-Paadam/p/book/9780367277390#sup

Towards the Future-of-U. The idea of hosting the 5th INTREPID Action Workshop in Gagliato, Calabria (Italy), between the 20th - 27th July 2017, raised during the London Workshop with the deliberate intention to embed one of the INTREPID research explorations within ongoing initiatives of some of the Universities involved in the INTREPID COST action: in particular a participatory design workshop on Creative Towns, coordinated by the University of Westminster, with the participation of Newcastle University. Other non-Cost members involved are: ILAUD, The International Laboratory of Architecture and Urban Design, the London School of Economics, the Universita’ degli Studi Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, the Università della Calabria and a local NGO, the Academy of the Nano-science of Gagliato. The participatory workshop has been funded by the Academy of the Nano-science of Gagliato and it has been fruitfully coupled with an INTREPID Workshop. The main aim of the participatory design workshop was to explore alternative scenarios for the sustainable local development of Gagliato, a small town located in a relative marginal area of the South of Italy, engaging various local stakeholders in the scenario exercise.

Dear friends and colleagues, We are pleased to share with you our lastest publication: Intrepid Knowledge: Interdisciplinary & Transdisciplinary Research and Collaboration - http://intrepid-cost.ics.ulisboa.pt/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/INTREPID_ebook.pdf A book that tells the story of INTREPID, and of the journey upon which we all embarked upon. In it, you will find a compendium of highlights from selected works carried out by our three working groups during the 4-year Intrepid journey, as well as reflections on the experience from the perspective of the participants, and finally - some ideas for an 'Intrepid future'. This is also -perhaps mainly- our way to say 'thank you' to the INTREPID community, its Management Committee members and Working Group teams, Training School participants, as well as invited speakers and international advisors, who have supported and inspired us over the years. Thank you all! Olivia, Marta & Marite

We witness a persistent tension between established ways of knowledge production through disciplines, and the urgent need to widen and change, both the production of knowledge and its organization, not least, in order to be able to understand and address the future and its challenges. Witnessing a growing call for inter- and transdisciplinarity (ITD), we set our goal to learn more about scholars who engage in this kind of research by asking these questions: What characterizes inter- and transdisciplinary researchers (ITDRs)? To what extent do these characteristics help ITDRs deal with the challenges of an academic career path? We address both questions by comparing the findings from the relevant literature and semi-structured interviews with ITDRs at different stages in their careers. Our results bring the ITDR personality a step further in taking a form. ITDR personalities can be characterized by a particular mix of motivations, attitudes, skills, and behaviors. However, the academic environment and its career paths do not seem prepared and adapted for such ITDR personalities. Furthermore and in contrast to the literature, the T-shaped training (first, disciplinary depth and then, ITDR) is considered one possible career path, with the other one being a specialization in facilitating knowledge integration and in developing theories, methods, and tools for ITD. Our analysis concludes by exploring the future of ITD if formal training and learning would be available and if the contextual conditions would be more conducive to undertaking this type of research.

This article considers conceptual frameworks and models applied in research about the multiple relations between human contact with natural environments (specifically green public spaces), diverse kinds of human activities and uses of those spaces, and effects on physical and mental health. Conceptual frameworks are tools for thinking about such complex subjects. Conceptual models represent the multiple relations between key factors and variables. These models can be used to represent the mutual interactions between the core components of environmental conditions of specific green public spaces, the main kinds of human activities in those settings, and various impacts on health. A literature search showed that the authors of various conceptual models used a metaphor of pathways to represent relations between explanatory variables by linear cause-effect relations. Mutual interaction between key variables and feedback loops between different components of the model are rarely included. Hence, it is argued that these models do not represent the complexity of real world situations. The authors propose a systemic conceptual framework founded on core principles of human ecology. The proposed conceptual framework and model have been formulated during and after an EU 7th Framework project about the ''Positive Health Effects of the Natural Outdoor Environment in Typical Populations in Different Regions of Europe."

This paper describes the development, conceptualization, and implementation of a transdisciplinary research pilot, the aim of which is to understand how human and planetary health could become a priority for those who control the urban development process. Key challenges include a significant dislocation between academia and the real world, alongside systemic failures in valuation and assessment mechanisms. The National Institutes of Health four‐phase model of transdisciplinary team‐based research is drawn on and adapted to reflect on what has worked well and what has not operationally. Results underscore the need for experienced academics open to new collaborations and ways of working; clarity of leadership without compromising exploration; clarification of the poorly understood “impacts interface” and navigation toward effective real world impact; acknowledgement of the additional time and resource required for transdisciplinary research and “nonacademic” researchers. Having practitioner‐researchers as part of the research leadership team requires rigourous reflective practice and effective management, but it can also ensure breadth in transdisciplinary outlook as well as constant course correction toward real‐world impact. It is important for the research community to understand better the opportunities and limitations provided by knowledge intermediaries in terms of function, specialism, and experience.

There are multiple consequences of urbanization and the development of cities including irreversible changes to ecosystems and diverse impacts on human health. The multiple consequences of urban development are difficult to understand owing to the complexity, diversity, and unpredictability of urbanization. The interrelations between human groups, their habitat and different kinds of global change to the biosphere and ecosystems are complex, emergent and systemic. This chapter argues that an interdisciplinary approach based on the generic principles of human ecology can improve our understanding of the consequences of large-scale urban development for health and well-being. This knowledge should be the foundation of urban planning and building construction. The advantage of applying principles of human ecology stem from its integrated conceptual framework of the multiple relations between human groups and all the components of their natural and built environments. This integrated, systemic framework can be applied to analyse the seven fundamental constituents of cities and urban development while addressing the challenge of urban health as a global phenomenon in the twenty-first century.

Inter- and transdisciplinarity are increasingly relevant concepts and research practices within academia. Although there is a consensus about the need to apply these practices, there is no agreement over definitions. Building on the outcomes of the first year of the COST Action TD1408 “Interdisciplinarity in research programming and funding cycles” (INTREPID), this paper describes the similarities and differences between interpretations of inter- and transdisciplinarity. Drawing on literature review and empirical results from participatory workshops involving INTREPID Network members from 27 different countries, the paper shows that diverse definitions of inter-and transdisciplinarity coexist within scientific literature and are reproduced by researchers and practitioners within the network. The recognition of this diversity did not hinder the definition of basic requirements for inter- and transdisciplinarity. We present five basic units considered as building blocks for this type of research. These building blocks are: (1) creation of collective glossaries, (2) definition of boundary objects, (3) use of combined problem- and solution-oriented approaches, (4) inclusion of a facilitator of inter-and transdisciplinary research within the team and (5) promotion of reflexivity by accompanying research. These were considered five basic units for effective inter- and transdisciplinary research although the 4th building block was also considered as “matrix” that holds all the others together.