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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The undisciplinary journey: early-career perspectives
in sustainability science
L. Jamila Haider
1
•Jonas Hentati-Sundberg
1
•Matteo Giusti
1
•Julie Goodness
1
•
Maike Hamann
1,2
•Vanessa A. Masterson
1
•Megan Meacham
1
•Andrew Merrie
1
•
Daniel Ospina
1,3
•Caroline Schill
1,3
•Hanna Sinare
1
Received: 17 November 2016 / Accepted: 6 June 2017 / Published online: 21 June 2017
The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication
Abstract The establishment of interdisciplinary Master’s
and PhD programs in sustainability science is opening up
an exciting arena filled with opportunities for early-career
scholars to address pressing sustainability challenges.
However, embarking upon an interdisciplinary endeavor as
an early-career scholar poses a unique set of challenges: to
develop an individual scientific identity and a strong and
specific methodological skill-set, while at the same time
gaining the ability to understand and communicate between
different epistemologies. Here, we explore the challenges
and opportunities that emerge from a new kind of inter-
disciplinary journey, which we describe as ‘undisci-
plinary.’ Undisciplinary describes (1) the space or
condition of early-career researchers with early interdisci-
plinary backgrounds, (2) the process of the journey, and (3)
the orientation which aids scholars to address the complex
nature of today’s sustainability challenges. The undisci-
plinary journey is an iterative and reflexive process of
balancing methodological groundedness and epistemolog-
ical agility to engage in rigorous sustainability science. The
paper draws upon insights from a collective journey of
broad discussion, reflection, and learning, including a sur-
vey on educational backgrounds of different generations of
sustainability scholars, participatory forum theater, and a
panel discussion at the Resilience 2014 conference
(Montpellier, France). Based on the results from this
diversity of methods, we suggest that there is now a new
and distinct generation of sustainability scholars that start
their careers with interdisciplinary training, as opposed to
only engaging in interdisciplinary research once strong
disciplinary foundations have been built. We further
identify methodological groundedness and epistemological
agility as guiding competencies to become capable sus-
tainability scientists and discuss the implications of an
undisciplinary journey in the current institutional context
of universities and research centers. In this paper, we
propose a simple framework to help early-career sustain-
ability scholars and well-established scientists successfully
navigate what can sometimes be an uncomfortable space in
education and research, with the ultimate aim of producing
and engaging in rigorous and impactful sustainability
science.
Keywords Interdisciplinary Education Sustainability
science Undisciplinary Methodological groundedness
Epistemological agility
Introduction
The future well-being of people and our shared Earth
depend on understanding the interconnectedness of nature
and society, and guiding these relationships along more
sustainable pathways (Kates et al. 2001; Komiyama and
Takeuchi 2006; Leach et al. 2010; Folke et al. 2016).
Handled by Jordi Segalas, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya,
Spain.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this
article (doi:10.1007/s11625-017-0445-1) contains supplementary
material, which is available to authorized users.
&L. Jamila Haider
jamila.haider@su.se
1
Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University,
Stockholm, Sweden
2
Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, Stellenbosch
University, Stellenbosch, South Africa
3
The Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, The Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden
123
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-017-0445-1
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Consequently, inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to
problem-driven and solutions-oriented research have
gained considerable traction over the past few decades,
clearly reflected in the development of the field of sus-
tainability science (Kates et al. 2001; Carpenter et al. 2009;
Lang et al. 2012; Brandt et al. 2013; Pereira et al. 2015;
Ruppert-Winkel et al. 2015).
Sustainability science is described as a field of research
that brings together scholarship, policy and practice, global
and local perspectives from the North and South, as well as
disciplines across the natural and social sciences, human-
ities, engineering, and medicine (Clark and Dickson 2003).
Miller et al. (2014) demonstrate that sustainability science
has made progress in the past decade toward deepening our
understanding of sustainability-related problems and chal-
lenges, even though large gaps remain in impact on actual
sustainability transitions. While it remains unclear whether
sustainability science is indeed (yet) an established scien-
tific discipline, it is broadly recognized that a science of
sustainability requires collaboration between disciplines
and across theory, practice, and policy (Bettencourt and
Kaur 2011). Bettencourt and Kaur (2011, p. 19540) state
that ‘there is arguably no example in the history of science
of a field that from its beginnings could span such distinct
dimensions and achieve at once ambitious and urgent goals
of transdisciplinary scientific rigor and tangible socioeco-
nomic impact.’ To be trained as a sustainability scientist
then requires new ways of engaging with each other, with
the world around us, and of reflection within our own
scientific processes.
Until recently, the path from disciplinary work to mul-
tidisciplinary coordination, and ultimately to inter- and
transdisciplinary endeavors (definitions in Table 1) has
often been explored by scholars firmly grounded in a
discipline, by stepping out of their comfort zones to tackle
issues that sit between disciplinary boundaries. This was
the case of pioneering researchers in sustainability science
and its intellectual predecessors, who often had strong roots
within their disciplines, or were already established
scholars, but pushed the boundaries of accepted paradigms
and operated in an interdisciplinary way (e.g., as described
by Folke 2006).
Consequently, sustainability science has multiple ori-
gins, which resulted in the development of various sub-
fields over the past decades; these are characterized by
different research foci, questions, vocabularies, method-
ologies, epistemologies, or even worldviews (de Vries
2013). For example, the ‘pathways to sustainability’
approach (Leach et al. 2010) and ‘resilience thinking’
(Folke et al. 2010,2016) are both subfields in sustainability
science with a systems perspective and an emphasis on
complex human–environment interactions and notions of
adaptive learning and diversity. However, their distinct
origins lead to ontological and epistemological differences,
which manifest themselves in different problem definitions
and prescriptions of actions (West et al. 2014). With its
roots in development, as well as science and technology
studies, the pathways to sustainability approach tends to
have human well-being and just governance as starting
points from which environmental sustainability can be
pursued. Resilience thinking on the other hand, with its
roots in ecology (Holling 1973), is shaped by a worldview
in which the biosphere is the foundation for all other
interactions on Earth (Folke et al. 2016). As a group of
authors, we identify ourselves more so with the latter, and
by our curiosity to understand how social-ecological
interconnections lead to emergent phenomena in complex
systems. The framework of complex adaptive systems
(Levin 1998) and concepts of resilience, adaptation, and
transformation (Folke et al. 2016) are some of the theo-
retical underpinnings of our position in the broader field of
sustainability science.
The pioneering spirit of ecological and economic
scholars in the 1980s (Kates et al. 2001) has enabled an
upcoming generation of sustainability scholars. Many
early-career sustainability researchers focus on interdisci-
plinary issues from early on in their academic careers
(often obtaining interdisciplinary Bachelor’s, Master’s, and
PhD degrees), without necessarily developing the same
strong disciplinary roots upon which previous generations
of sustainability scholars built their work. This circum-
stance is made possible by the multitude of interdisci-
plinary undergraduate and graduate programs in
sustainability science that have been established in recent
years (see Supplementary Materials 1). We note, however,
that there is still significant resistance to this profile in the
academic community, both in principle—due to concerns
Table 1 Definitions of different types of mixed-disciplinary research
Mixed discipline
research
Definition
Multidisciplinarity Multidisciplinarity is thematically organized
rather than problem-oriented. Disciplinary
boundaries are generally not crossed, but
rather different disciplines are considered in
parallel (Stock and Burton 2011)
Interdisciplinarity Interdisciplinarity integrates perspectives,
information, data, techniques, tools, concepts,
and/or theories from two or more disciplines
(Cronin 2008)
Transdisciplinarity A process of collaboration between scholars and
non-scholars on a specific real-world problem
(Walter et al. 2007)
Undisciplinarity Problem-based, integrative, interactive,
emergent, reflexive science, which involves
strong forms of collaboration and partnership
(Robinson 2008)
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about competency, quality, and standards of what it means
to be a sustainability scholar—and in practice—due to the
relatively rigid institutional structure of most universities
and their employment criteria, performance metrics, and
incentive systems (Robinson 2008; Whitmer et al. 2010;
Brown et al. 2015; Turner et al. 2015). There is evidence
and concern that students starting on interdisciplinary
career tracks have more difficulty in finding jobs within
academia and publish less than students graduating in tra-
ditional, disciplinary subject areas (Rhoten and Parker
2004; Leahey et al. 2012).
Given these challenges, as early-career sustainability
scholars, we face a tension that arises from our common
motivation to articulate, conceptualize, and address com-
plex human–environment problems, often broad in nature,
while at the same time ensuring that we develop a suffi-
ciently specialized skill-set to contribute meaningfully
toward knowledge generation, or even to articulate solu-
tions to complex societal issues. We have summarized this
dilemma in the following way:
How can we, as graduate students and future
researchers, perform high-quality research and build
identity in the field of sustainability science, when
starting as interdisciplinary individuals without pro-
found roots in a discipline, and working within a
world dominated by established disciplines?
This dilemma recognizes the early-stage interdisci-
plinary training that we observe as a new feature of our
academic generation. We find that, increasingly, PhD stu-
dents like us are no longer ecologists, economists, or
sociologists working together in an interdisciplinary team,
but rather that we are interdisciplinary individuals engag-
ing with disciplines, or even that from our interdisciplinary
training we engage with others with a similar interdisci-
plinary background, collaborating in an effort to create
inter- and transdisciplinary science, and essentially prac-
ticing what we refer to here as ‘undisciplinary science’
(Robinson 2008). Robinson (2008) outlines undisciplinary
science as problem-based, integrative, interactive and
emergent, reflexive and involving strong forms of collab-
oration and partnership. This definition is focused largely
on transdisciplinary science involving participation of
academic and non-academic actors (Table 1). While many
sustainability scholars engage in such transdisciplinary
work, in this paper we are concerned primarily with the
generation of knowledge at the intersection of existing
disciplines within academia. In this study, we build upon
Robinson’s definition and explore the undisciplinary jour-
ney as a descriptive feature of the space or condition at the
beginning of a research career with interdisciplinary
training/education, as well as a suggested prescription for
how to navigate the process toward developing a
foundation for rigorous interdisciplinary sustainability
science. Through a reflexive process, an undisciplinary
orientation may be developed, guiding one’s approach to
sustainability science endeavors. These three phases are
what we refer to as the ‘undisciplinary journey,’ which we
explore in this paper using three distinct methods: a survey
on educational backgrounds of different generations of
scientists, participatory forum theater, and a panel discus-
sion at the Resilience 2014 conference (held in Montpel-
lier, France).
Through these combined activities, we explore what it
means to practice sustainability science in an undisci-
plinary space at an early stage of our careers, and address
the following key points:
1. What does undisciplinary mean (to us/others)?
2. What challenges and opportunities come with doing
‘undisciplinary’ research?
3. How do we address these challenges and take advan-
tage of these opportunities within our current institu-
tional structures?
As a group of young scholars at a sustainability science
institution, the authors of this paper feel well situated to
reflect on the formal and informal dimensions of this pro-
cess. We hope that the lessons we have learned will be of
use to other early-career scholars faced with similar
opportunities and challenges.
Methodological approach
In order to explore what it means to be a generation of
early-career sustainability scholars facing new challenges
and the particular dilemma outlined in the introduction, we
embarked upon three phases of inquiry designed to take
advantage of the Resilience 2014 conference in Montpel-
lier, France—a major international event in the field of
sustainability science that is held every three years. Resi-
lience thinking is a subfield of sustainability science (Folke
et al. 2016), which acknowledges the complex interlink-
ages and dependencies between social, economic, and
ecological systems, at multiple scales (Folke et al. 2002;
Folke 2006; Xu et al. 2015), and is increasingly becoming
an integral part of practice, policy, and theory (Folke et al.
2016). The conference was an ideal sampling space since
the participants of this conference captured a broad spec-
trum of sustainability scholars within the broader resilience
research and practice network/community, from different
backgrounds and levels of experience. The three steps in
our inquiry were: (1) a survey within the broader resilience
science community; (2) participatory forum theater, first in
an exploratory workshop within the PhD student cohort at
our institution and then at an open conference session, and
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(3) an expert panel discussion. The latter two steps took
place at the Resilience 2014 conference in a special session
called ‘Students’ perspectives on sustainability science
research—are we moving towards undisciplinarity?’
A survey of interdisciplinarity in sustainability
science
We developed an online survey to explore the (inter)dis-
ciplinary backgrounds of sustainability scientists in the
broader network of resilience research and practice, and
how these vary across different generations of researchers.
We sent out the survey link to the e-mail list of all Resi-
lience 2014 conference participants (over 800 in total), as
well as different social media platforms (Twitter, Face-
book, resilience focused blogs such as Resilience Science,
and the Resilience Alliance newsletter), prior to the con-
ference. We received a total of 385 replies between April 9
and 30, 2014, of which we included 325 in our analyses, as
we were only interested in respondents who had already
obtained a PhD degree or who were PhD candidates at the
time of responding to the survey.
To be able to categorize conference participants, the
survey recorded the year in which each participant obtained
or expected to obtain her/his PhD degree (\1990,
1990–1999, 2000–2009, 2010–2014, [2015), as well as
participants’ organizational affiliations and positions. The
core of the survey included the following questions on
disciplinary background and current work:
1. Which of the following options most closely resembles
the title of your undergraduate degree (Bachelor or
similar), as stated in the diploma?
2. Which of the following options most closely resembles
the title of your Master’s degree (MSc/MA or similar),
as stated in the diploma?
3. Which of the following options most closely resembles
the title of your PhD degree, as (will be) stated in the
diploma?
4. Which of the following options best describes your
current research area?
For each of these questions, the respondents were asked
to choose one option from a list of 27 disciplines (classified
in the categories of Natural Sciences, Social Sciences,
Humanities, Mathematics/Statistics, and Applied Sciences/
Professions—following a conventional faculty structure) or
Interdisciplinary Sciences/Studies. We also provided an
open option for participants to answer in their own words.
The list of all the disciplines is provided in Supplementary
Material 2. This survey was intended to give us a sense of
the decadal change in formal training/education back-
grounds of the researchers in the broader resilience
research and practice network.
Exploring the dilemma of undisciplinary science
through forum theater
Forum theater has been applied in a variety of contexts to
assist people in finding solutions to a wide range of chal-
lenges (Brett-MacLean et al. 2012). As its name suggests,
at the core of this methodology is the development and
presentation of a piece of theater, aimed at communicating
a topic, idea, or situation, which is characterized by conflict
or complexity. Forum theater is used to break down the
traditional barrier between actors and audience members,
encouraging the latter to become ‘spect-actors’ who can
replace actors at points of frustration in the story, to insert
their own actions and thus determine the course of the play
toward a more favorable outcome (Sullivan and Lloyd
2006; Kumagai et al. 2007). We chose this method because
of its ability to clearly and coherently illustrate a tangible
dilemma in a neutral space, allowing for an interactive
learning process to take place between the audience
members and performers.
We applied the forum theater method in two steps. First, we
had an internal exploratory workshop at our home institution
to draw out and distill the challenges that we as PhD students
face in an interdisciplinary PhD program (for details see
Supplementary Material 3). The challenges identified were:
1. Breadth vs. depth in scientific knowledge—how do we
ensure the broad and diverse knowledge needed for
sustainability science while building and maintaining
in-depth disciplinary knowledge and practice?
2. Identity as a scientist—if we do not see ourselves as
‘ecologists’ or ‘economists’ or otherwise belonging to
some discipline, who are we?
3. Institutional structures—how can we pursue an inter-
disciplinary career within today’s university structures
and professional reward systems?
Based on this first internal round of forum theater, we
developed a script of a fictitious and deliberately exag-
gerated situation (see Supplementary Material 3) that
explored a character struggling to come to terms with these
challenges. This scripted play was then performed as a
piece of forum theater during the session at the Resilience
2014 conference, in front of an audience of about 150
people that included a wide array of attendees, from PhD
students to senior scientists. The audience participated in
the theater by giving suggestions to the characters on how
to respond to these challenges, which were then acted out.
Thus, the forum theater exercises helped us to evaluate
not only our own experiences as PhD students (in the first,
internal round), but also allowed us to clarify and illustrate
the opportunities and challenges we face to a broad and
diverse audience, as well as assess the reactions and
interventions of the audience (in the second, public round).
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The three challenges identified in the internal forum theater
helped us elicit questions to focus on for the panel dis-
cussion that followed.
Panel discussion on opportunities and challenges
of the undisciplinary journey
In a final step, we built on the insights gained from the
survey, as well as the internal theater workshop and public
forum theater session, to facilitate a deeper discussion with
four invited experts in the field of sustainability science.
Immediately after the forum theater session, we held a
panel discussion. Our motivation for including those par-
ticular individuals is summarized in Table 2. The panel
was focused on ‘the undisciplinary dilemma’ (as stated in
the introduction), inter- and transdisciplinary research
methodologies, and teaching and educational program
design.
We analyzed the data of the panel discussion based on
inductively emergent themes (Boyatzis 1998), following
the precepts of grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1998).
Specifically, members of the author team identified aspects
of the panel discussion transcript to answer the question:
‘What are tools or concepts that can help us best navigate
the undisciplinary journey on which we find ourselves?’
The emergent themes were validated through a process of
thematic consensus building between all the authors (Hu-
berman and Miles 2002).
Results
The undisciplinary journey as a new phenomenon
The results from our exploratory survey suggest that in the
current generation of sustainability science PhD students
within the broader resilience research and practice network
(i.e., those who had not yet obtained their degree at the
time of the survey), there is a higher proportion of indi-
viduals who have an interdisciplinary academic back-
ground (at Master’s level) than in respondents who have
already obtained their PhDs. Figure 1a shows how Inter-
disciplinary Sciences/Studies and Applied Sciences/Pro-
fessions dominate over Social and Natural Science
Master’s degrees for this group. Similarly, the proportion
of Interdisciplinary Sciences/Studies PhD programs is the
highest for PhD students who expect to obtain their degrees
in 2015 or later (at the time of survey, administered in
April 2014) (Fig. 1b).
Interestingly, though these PhD students described their
degrees as interdisciplinary, a smaller proportion described
their current research as interdisciplinary compared to
older generations (Fig. 1c). One possible explanation for
these results might be that today’s established sustainabil-
ity scholars, who started with a more disciplinary back-
ground, are more willing to identify themselves as
interdisciplinary, while an increasing fraction of the early-
career researchers feel the need to describe their own work
Table 2 List of panelists in the panel discussion, their relevant experience, and the questions they were asked
Panelist Area of expertise Questions asked
Joern Fischer, Leuphana
University Lu
¨neburg,
Germany
Experience with interdisciplinary activities and research
programs in the context of landscape sustainability.
E.g., Fischer et al. (2012,2014)
Host of Ideas 4 Sustainability blog: https://
ideas4sustainability.wordpress.com
We have heard that you are starting a new
interdisciplinary research program and that you are in
the process of recruiting new PhD students and
Postdocs. What are the skills and competences you are
looking for in that recruitment process?
Joan David Ta
`bara,
Autonomous University
of Barcelona, Spain
Experience in sustainability knowledge integration and
learning, as well as reframing of research, education
and policy for sustainability.
E.g., Ta
`bara (2013a,b); Ta
`bara and Chabay (2013)
What is your personal survival kit for working towards
knowledge integration?
Tracy Van Holt, East
Carolina University,
USA
Holds an interdisciplinary degree, with extensive
experience in interdisciplinary scientific methodologies
used in sustainability science.
E.g., Van Holt et al. (2016); Brondizio and Van Holt
(2014)
Regarding all the opportunities and challenges we face
as interdisciplinary researchers, in your opinion, what
are the kinds of competences we should develop? And
how can we ‘market’ those better?
Frances Westley,
University of Waterloo,
Canada
Experience in interdisciplinary research collaboration as
well as having led and designed novel curricula for
interdisciplinary programs at the University of
Waterloo.
E.g., Westley et al. (2011); Westley and Antadze (2010)
Do you foresee any favorable changes in the near future
regarding the institutional structure of universities, and
research in general, becoming more favorable for
interdisciplinary researchers to build a career?
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as clearly demarcated within a discipline. An alternative
explanation is that senior and junior scholars perceive
disciplines differently, where more junior scholars may
consider sustainability science as a discipline, while senior
scientists see it as interdisciplinary.
Forum theater and panel discussion outcomes
The forum theater at the conference session prompted
active audience engagement. When the protagonist strug-
gled with her ‘dilemma’ (Fig. 2, and see introduction),
audience members stepped in to provide suggestions on
how she might navigate this uncomfortable space/situation
(in which a more disciplinary scientist questioned her
professional identity), how to balance breadth and depth in
her research, and how to develop a niche in an interdisci-
plinary world (see script and link to video in Supplemen-
tary Material 3). The audience input was creative and
helpful, but did not provide easy solutions.
The theater performance set the stage for the panel
discussion, in which three competency streams emerged as
being critical to successfully navigate the ‘undisciplinary
journey’: (1) the need for a deep grounding in methodol-
ogy; (2) the importance of being aware of and able to
navigate ontological and epistemological differences
(‘epistemological agility’); (3) the ability to strategically
navigate existing institutional spaces and structures.
Following the analysis of the panel discussion, we
highlight two guiding competencies: ‘methodological
groundedness’ and ‘epistemological agility’. The need to
identify and develop core competencies in sustainability
science is becoming increasingly recognized (Barth et al.
2007; Wiek et al. 2011). The process to develop these
competencies takes place both through formal learning
(through institutional support and pedagogical structure),
Master's degree
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
1990>
90-99
00-09
10-14
2015<
PhD degree
Year of PhD graduation
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
1990>
90-99
00-09
10-14
2015<
Current research
Proportion
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
1990>
90-99
00-09
10-14
2015<
a
c
b
Natural sciences
Social sciences
Applied sciences or professions
Mathematics or Statistics
Humanities
Interdisciplinary sciencies
Fig. 1 Results from survey exploring research backgrounds of
Resilience 2014 conference participants. Number of respondents:
before 1990: 32; 1990–1999: 32; 2000–2009: 56; 2010–2014: 93;
after 2015: 111. The list of options for the online survey is found in
Supplementary Material 2
Fig. 2 Artistic rendition of the sustainability science PhD student
(right) attempting to explain her ‘background’ to the more disci-
plinary ‘Nanotech science’ PhD student (left) who questioned her
professional identity. Audience suggestions included: ‘don’t over
share, explain your research question, and stand your ground with
confidence.’ The video of the forum theater performance can be seen
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NveKDnImxS0 (Drawing by
Johanna Yletyinen)
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as well as informal mechanisms (through peer engagement
and students’ self-responsibility) (Barth et al. 2007).
Methodological groundedness can be defined as the deep
understanding and skillful handling of at least one specific
methodological approach for data gathering, modeling,
and/or analysis that is relevant to some area of sustain-
ability science, but ideally is applicable to a range of areas.
Based on the panelists’ input, we define epistemological
agility as an understanding of different ontological and
epistemological standpoints and views across multiple
disciplines, enabling better communication and collabora-
tion with different researchers, and facilitating open inter-
disciplinary practice for individuals and within research
teams. In other words, this includes a self-reflexiveness to
not only work with other disciplines, but also to work
within them. This goes beyond epistemological awareness
to emphasize an individual’s ability to use alternative
epistemological lenses. Such agility necessarily empha-
sizes and places a high value on the humility and openness
that should characterize engagement across epistemologies.
Balancing methodological groundedness and epistemolog-
ical agility can form a basis for rigorous sustainability
science (Fig. 3).
These two guiding competences characterize the well-
known ‘breadth’ vs. ‘depth’ struggle in science (Schwartz
et al. 2008). Figure 3illustrates how methodological
groundedness and epistemological agility relate, and that
there may be different ways to navigate this journey in the
quest to achieve rigorous science, as an early-career scholar
with interdisciplinary training.
In Fig. 3, the lower left quadrant (a) is what one of the
panelists referred to as conceptual la–la-land (Table 3)
where jargon and concepts can hijack early-career scholars’
attention if they have not been able to build competency in
epistemological agility and methodological groundedness.
The upper left quadrant (b) is what we refer to as disciplinary
immersion, where methodological skills are high but
reflection on the epistemological underpinning of the
methods and approaches is poor, making it easy to get sucked
into the strong attractor of a discipline. The lower right
corner (c) is characterized by a high degree of epistemo-
logical awareness but limited skills in specific methods. We
call this an uncomfortable space, where high reflexivity
without a robust skill-set can cause anxiety about one’s
possible scientific contribution. The upper right quadrant (d),
characterized by the successful combination of high
Fig. 3 Undisciplinary compass.
The relationship between two
guiding competencies:
epistemological agility and
methodological groundedness
(figure credit: Jerker Lokrantz/
Azote)
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epistemological agility and methodological groundedness, is
what we refer to as a basis for conducting rigorous sustain-
ability science as an undisciplinary scholar (in red to repre-
sent compass orientation).
Discussion
To be undisciplinary
Building on these explorations, this paper offers an early-
career scholar perspective on sustainability research. In
Robinson’s (2008) paper on ‘Being Undisciplined,’ dif-
ferent temperaments of interdisciplinarity are put forth, but
what it means to be undisciplinary is never clearly defined.
Based on our experiences and the results presented here,
we provide a working definition of undisciplinary to
describe the journey that early-career researchers navigate
in order to achieve rigorous sustainability science. Undis-
ciplinary science is therefore not a new type (or further
evolution) of mixed-disciplinary research [i.e., it does not
replace multi-, inter-, or trans-disciplinarity (MIT-disci-
plinarity) see Klein (2017)], rather it is a personal process
as well as a mode of collaboration from which one can
engage in various strategies of research. The types of
research and the particular contexts that we face as early-
career researchers create an undisciplinary space that is
part of our unique MIT-disciplinary process, and the
reflexive undisciplinary process and orientation provides us
with an identity and a set of skills to engage in MIT-dis-
ciplinary research. We use this lens to unpack our core
dilemma and what it means to be early-career researchers,
with interdisciplinary training while engaging with others
with similar backgrounds, in a world dominated by estab-
lished disciplines.
Table 3 Key quotes from panel discussion and coded themes to which they contribute
Quote Theme
TvH: ‘Show me your method, show what you can bring. And it doesn’t matter what discipline it comes from.
That is an avenue for interdisciplinary collaboration.’
JF: ‘The biggest risk I see in people that go very interdisciplinary in their PhDs is that they end up being
conceptually very broad, but get stuck in what has sometimes been called ‘‘conceptual la–la-land’’: They know
a little bit about everything but they are not actually good at anything, and that is a real problem. That doesn’t
mean that you have to be good at a particular discipline, [but rather] things that are transportable, that you can
use in many different instances.’
JF: ‘My main recommendation would be not to think so much about disciplines, but think about two or three
things that you are good at, and make those your profile, make those your strengths. These could be an
analytical technique or writing brilliant conceptual papers, whatever it is, but you have got to have something
that is unique to you. (…) have a couple of strengths that you recognize and build on those.’
Methodological grounding
FW: ‘So what is the survival kit? It is something I will call ‘‘epistemological agility’’ (…): basically
understanding where thinking comes from. Within science and social science you have these multiple
paradigms about what is truth, what is data, what is the role of the researcher. They are different from each
other, but if you are trained to recognize that, it is like cracking codes. It means you know how to interface with
whatever group you are looking at. (…) You start getting much more comfortable with [interdisciplinary
research] once you start decoding in that way, and you come to situate yourself, and see the weaknesses in
other perspectives, and your own as well. This makes you feel much more assured about interacting with
multiple different types of disciplines and scientists.’
JDT: ‘Different types of problems require different types of methods. The main method in my view is
conversation. Students need to be able to listen, and ask the right questions. I believe in epistemological
democracy.’
JDT: ‘If you dig a hole too deep, you might not be able to get out; I think that is the problem. So try to get
everything you need to know, but not more, and then move to the next thing.’
Epistemological agility
FW: ‘In this highly interdisciplinary context we ought to train our graduate students with real good courses on
research design and epistemology so that they have that capacity to crack codes. (…) It is the hidden
superpower, (…) if you develop some sophistication there, it gives you a leg up in discussions, which I think it
is a key interdisciplinary skill.’
FW: At the moment, ‘in order to get academic jobs the vast majority will have to squeeze into a disciplinary slot.
(…) There are a few institutes and think tanks within universities which search specifically for interdisciplinary
training, but they are still few and far between.’
JF: ‘For PhD students that start with me, I’m not really too worried if they know much at all really, depending on
what the research is they are going to have to pick new research skills as they go anyway. (…) But for a
postdoc it’s a bit different. I expect a postdoc to help me, I need them to already have skills.’
Navigating institutions and
education
TvH Tracy van Holt, JF Joern Fischer, FW Frances Westley, JDT Joan David Ta
`bara
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Undisciplinary journey
In attempting to define undisciplinary, we asked ourselves
these questions: Is an undisciplinary space something that
early-career sustainability researchers find themselves in and
have to deal with? Or is it something that we would like to
embrace as a quality that improves our research and its
impact? We find that it can be simultaneously understood as a
space and a process, which together form the undisciplinary
journey. In dealing with what it means to navigate an undis-
ciplinary space, undisciplinary scholars go through a process,
which is our primary focus in this paper. We build on four
distinct phases or professional situations in which early-career
scholars may find themselves, and describe three main styl-
ized trajectories between them (Fig. 3, quadrants a–d), which
we argue can help to guide an undisciplinary journey within
sustainability science. Finally, we discuss the undisciplinary
journey as something that can be developed as an asset by
individuals or groups of sustainability scholars. In viewing
and defining this journey as a space, a process and an orien-
tation, we hope to convey that an undisciplinary orientation
can ultimately become an asset that enables rigorous, solu-
tions-oriented science within groups of scholars and institu-
tions. The section concludes with suggestions for institutional
support for undisciplinary research journeys and endeavors.
Undisciplinary space
The dilemma articulated at the beginning of this paper was:
How could we ‘perform high-quality research and build
identity in the field of sustainability science, when starting as
interdisciplinary individuals without profound roots in a dis-
cipline, and working within a world dominated by established
disciplines?’ This undisciplinary space, created through the
research questions we pose, is a space in which there are no
clear rules or forms of engagement, no writing formulas, nor
clear methodological pathways. Sword (Sword 2012,p.12),in
her book aimed at graduate students, on Stylish Writing,states
that, conventionally, ‘to enter an academic discipline is to
become disciplined: trained to habits of order through cor-
rection and chastisements that are ‘assumed to be salutary’ by
one’s teachers’. The undisciplinary space is the arena in which
the larger undisciplinary journey happens (Fig. 3), a space in
which there are no boundaries to guide you, but also no
boundaries to hold you back.
Undisciplinary process
Central to this journey is the undisciplinary process. This
process involves navigating through the undisciplinary
space depicted in Fig. 3. We propose that a necessary
characteristic to follow a fruitful undisciplinary process of
scholarship is self-reflexivity, which involves examining
both changes in oneself and the relationship between
research process and outcomes (Hsiung 2010). The undis-
ciplinary compass (Fig. 3) provides guidance for con-
stantly re-evaluating where you are in the research process,
and what skills you may need to seek in collaborators, or
hone for yourself.
Viewing the different quadrants as states for individual
researchers (or research groups) suggests that there are
different ways to transition from one space to another,
toward the goal of rigorous sustainability science (or even
interdisciplinary science more broadly), which we argue
can only be achieved once the individual researcher (or
research group) finds themselves in the upper right quad-
rant. We emphasize that we see the progression and navi-
gation between quadrants throughout a scientific career as
iterative. Progressing along the horizontal axes of Fig. 3
follows a more traditional path toward rigorous interdis-
ciplinary sustainability science. Starting from disciplinary
immersion (b): Researchers are trained in a discipline, and
once established in it, they decide to engage with
researchers from other disciplines. Alternatively, pro-
gressing along the vertical axes of Fig. 3represents a
growing proportion of the cases in sustainability science,
relative to the former trajectory, and hence we elaborate
below based on insights from the panel discussion.
To illustrate the way in which we have experienced this
process ourselves, imagine an early-career sustainability
scholar starting her/his career with low epistemological
agility and low methodological groundedness (Fig. 3a):
‘The biggest risk I see in people that go very interdisci-
plinary in their PhDs is that they end up being conceptually
very broad, but get stuck in what has sometimes been
called ‘‘conceptual la–la-land’’, they know a little bit about
everything but they are not actually good at anything, and
that is a real problem’ (JF, quote, Table 3). Alternatively,
an early-career sustainability scholar might be trained in a
few core methods, but get sucked into the strong attractor
of a discipline, making it hard to engage in deep interdis-
ciplinary production (Fig. 3b). One suggested strategy to
avoid the attractor of a discipline was reflected by a
respondent during the panel discussion: ‘My main recom-
mendation would be not to think so much about disciplines,
but think about two or three things that you are good at, and
make those your profile, make those your strengths. These
could be an analytical technique or writing brilliant con-
ceptual papers, whatever it is, but you have got to have
something that is unique to you. (…) have a couple of
strengths that you recognize and build on those (JF, quote,
Table 3).’
A third situation would be if the early-career scholar is
confident in navigating different epistemologies, but may
find herself/himself in an uncomfortable space (Fig. 3c) of
negotiating between different ways of producing scientific
Sustain Sci (2018) 13:191–204 199
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knowledge without having the methodological skills and
confidence to move forward in any particular direction
(especially when a direction is largely unexplored, which is
quite characteristic of a new scientific field). Although we
would expect that all scholars feel uncomfortable at dif-
ferent times in their careers, we think that the lack of
disciplinary anchoring makes this feeling more poignant.
Scientific progress depends on the continuous creation of
uncomfortable spaces (Rayner 2012) and innovation exists
at the boundary of this discomfort while at the same time
finding the confidence to move forward in a robust and
rigorous way.
We acknowledge and value the pioneering work done by
previous generations in creating an interdisciplinary envi-
ronment for sustainability research. It is in this environ-
ment that interdisciplinary graduate programs have been
established around the world, in response to the demands of
the evolving field of sustainability science. Our survey
results suggest that now, more than ever before, PhD stu-
dents are starting their careers with an interdisciplinary
background. We argue that this is an important difference
between the path taken by previous generations of sus-
tainability scientists, who typically started their careers by
practicing disciplinary science, then moving on to multi-,
then inter- or even transdisciplinary science. Achieving
undisciplinary orientation is by no means a homogenous
identity. Some researchers may find themselves with strong
epistemological agility and may have opted for method-
ological pluralism (Norgaard 1989) as opposed to others
with more methodological depth.
Navigating this balance between depth and breadth
demands an array of more specific skills, which will vary
across fields of inquiry. An early-career scholar, sustain-
ability science group, or program, makes trade-offs at
different points in time between learning in-depth methods,
reading broadly on different ways of knowing, and devel-
oping other competencies to do rigorous interdisciplinary
science. Core competencies in sustainability science have
been proposed by Wiek et al. (2011: systems thinking,
anticipatory, normative, strategic and interpersonal com-
petencies). In addition to these competencies we find it
helpful to think of specific skills along the continuum of
our broader guiding competencies of epistemological agi-
lity and methodological groundedness. On the one hand,
they are specific technical skills, such as geographical
information systems (GIS) analysis, network analysis,
statistical or mathematical modeling, qualitative data
analysis, interviewing skills. Other skills include collabo-
rative interpersonal skills across cultures, between ideolo-
gies and working in different contexts. Skills in facilitation,
participatory approaches and synthesis (i.e., to see and
make sense of ‘the big picture’) are also valuable skills in
sustainability science. Some skills and methods align better
with certain epistemologies (West et al. 2014). High epis-
temological agility would allow a researcher to effectively
select appropriate and relevant methodologies according to
the specific research needs. In line with our proposed
undisciplinary process, epistemological agility means the
ability to discern different disciplinary traditions and nav-
igate between them with confidence in order to match
ontologies with appropriate epistemologies and method-
ologies (Table 3; McWilliam 2012; Khagram et al. 2010).
Agility should help scholars avoid getting stuck in certain
theoretical approaches or scientific paradigms, but equally
important is the awareness and openness to different ways
of knowing and learning, which is critical for addressing
issues of social-ecological complexity (personal commu-
nication Joan David Ta
`bara). Through this undisciplinary
journey, early-career scholars may come to acquire a
foundation for doing rigorous sustainability science, bal-
ancing methodological groundedness and epistemological
agility.
Undisciplinary orientation
Navigating the undisciplinary process, we can develop an
undisciplinary orientation: the ability and desire to embrace
the undisciplinary journey. It goes beyond accepting dis-
comfort at the boundaries of disciplines, and science, more
broadly. An undisciplinary orientation is to embrace
complexity and uncertainty in the pursuit of problem-ori-
ented research.
In addition to the core competencies and specific skills
of engaging in rigorous sustainability science, the suc-
cessful navigation of the process is a quality of its own
right, which should be nurtured and acknowledged within
the growing institutional structures around sustainability
science, at various different phases of a researcher’s career.
Embracing this orientation may be particularly helpful for
early-career scholars dealing with an undisciplinary space,
and processing their own dilemmas. Indeed, as a group of
authors and cohort of PhD students, our reflexive engage-
ment with this journey has contributed to clarifying our
individual research identities and contributions to sustain-
ability science.
Methodological reflections
The tension and obstacles inherent in combining very dif-
ferent methods, potentially even based on different epis-
temologies, characterizes the journey toward building a
foundation for rigorous sustainability science. Arts and
performative methods have played a key role in challeng-
ing existing epistemologies and identities (Heras and
Ta
`bara 2014) and provide an arena to ‘open up’ knowledge
systems (Cornell et al. 2013). The process of combining
200 Sustain Sci (2018) 13:191–204
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diverse methods, including performative methods, in this
paper was in itself a valuable and constructive learning
experience and is representative of the types of challenges
faced by early-career interdisciplinary scholars in their
collaborations with colleagues from either other disciplines
and/or others with similarly interdisciplinary backgrounds.
Indeed, the challenge of such a methodological approach
was evident in discussions between the authors in devel-
oping and presenting the methodologies used and the
results in this paper.
The forum theater, the thematic analysis of a panel
discussion from a conference session, and the survey
complement each other and are indicative of the method-
ological pluralism and innovative combination of methods
that is characteristic of interdisciplinary sustainability sci-
ence (Norgaard 1989; Folke et al. 2016). Each method
served a specific purpose and built on each other in the
following way:
1. The survey provided support that there has been a
‘generational shift’ with respect to the backgrounds
and starting points of those pursuing interdisciplinary
sustainability science.
2. The forum theater provided a structure that encouraged
openness, and reflexivity for, and insights into, inter-
disciplinary scholarship from early-career scholars,
while also incorporating experiences and reflections
from the (more experienced) audience.
3. The panel built on these experiential insights through
expert elicitation.
The opportunity for engagement by the authors over a
period of three years in articulating a joint dilemma,
designing the methodologies to explore it, and lengthy
discussions throughout the writing process of this paper,
created an arena for personal and collective reflexivity
through which we came to understand and think strategi-
cally about the undisciplinary journey. The phenomenon of
an undisciplinary journey, as first and foremost a process,
but also a space and an orientation, which we describe in
this paper in relation to sustainability science, is not a new
‘discovery’ and is indeed part of the cycle of science (Kuhn
1962), where real-life challenges arise that single disci-
plines are not able to address and thus new disciplines or
collaborative fields are born. Yet, as part of this cycle,
Bettencourt and Kaur (2011) and Kates (2011) contend that
sustainability science is a new, and different kind of sci-
ence. In viewing sustainability science as a dynamic, post-
normal science that should not be reduced to traditional
disciplinary boundaries, our reflection on the undisci-
plinary journey can help make sense of this space through
engaging in self-reflexive processes and collaborations. As
more and more interdisciplinary scholars enter graduate
programs with interdisciplinary backgrounds, institutional
structures may choose to reflect on and embrace undisci-
plinary orientations to help reduce the inherent risks and
challenges involved in pursuing highly interdisciplinary
PhDs.
Academic institutions—navigation aids
for undisciplinary processes
Becoming an accomplished sustainability researcher, or
even more broadly an interdisciplinary scholar, involves an
inevitable process of iteration, through combining and
matching different methodologies with different episte-
mologies in order to best address any given problem. There
is an important role for institutions to play in this process,
both in training and educating early-career scholars in
order to minimize the time spent in an ‘uncomfort-
able space’ or in ‘conceptual la–la-land,’ as well as creat-
ing more promising and substantive career trajectories.
Interdisciplinary research centers and departments are
increasingly offering interdisciplinary PhD programs (see
Supplementary Material 1), and it is critically important to
ask how these programs can pedagogically support PhD
students in their navigation of an undisciplinary journey.
What are the opportunities and challenges, for example, in
being supervised by researchers who themselves were
trained in disciplinary schools? What are the risks involved
in being examined by scholars established in disciplinary
traditions? Ideas about what an interdisciplinary skill-set in
sustainability science looks like remain nascent as the field
itself is still emerging. Inevitably there will be different
perspectives on how best to do this; the panelists providing
expert advice in this paper also had somewhat contradic-
tory ideas on the pedagogical strategy of educating PhD
students, with one advocating learning-by-doing, and
another emphasizing the importance of formal training in
epistemological agility (Table 3).
In either case, a pedagogical strategy should align with
an awareness of the outlets that exist for publication as well
as future career opportunities. There is an increasing
recognition of the continuing development of high-quality
interdisciplinary research in the publishing sphere, the
creation of the sustainability science section in PNAS
(Clark 2007), the creation of the journal Sustainability
Science (Komiyama and Takeuchi 2006), the soon to be
launched Nature Sustainability journal, and the early
recognition of sustainability science as a science of its own
(Kates et al. 2001). Despite these positive steps toward
publications in sustainability science, a recent paper in
Nature suggests there is a growing gap between the
increasing number of possibilities to conduct interdisci-
plinary research and the level of career advancement, since
most academic institutions still place more value on high
profile research outputs like articles in high-impact journals
Sustain Sci (2018) 13:191–204 201
123
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than other outcomes like cooperative learning or policy
engagement (Gewin 2014).
Conclusions
Our results from the survey, forum theater, and panel discussion
indicate that a growing proportion of the sustainability science
research community can be described as ‘undisciplinary’
scholars, based on their interdisciplinary training, and who
consequently face new opportunities and challenges as early-
career sustainability researchers. In the paper we share our
experiences in facing an undisciplinary journey and suggest
guides to navigate and embrace this process. We propose the
undisciplinary journey as a new and as yet relatively uncharted
journey for achieving rigorous inter- or transdisciplinary sus-
tainability research and propose an ‘undisciplinary compass’ to
help navigate this journey toward more sustainable futures
through reflexively balancing methodological groundedness
with epistemological agility. The undisciplinary journey and
compass we describe may also be helpful for other interdisci-
plinary fields, or for scholars who may have abandoned their
‘background’ discipline and find themselves in new and
uncomfortable spaces. We hope that the exploratory insights
offered in this paper provide useful suggestions to early-career
researchers, research teams and interdisciplinary research
centers to facilitate navigation of the ever-evolving boundaries
within sustainability science, where innovations and solutions
emerge.
Acknowledgements Our profound thanks go to the Stockholm Resi-
lience Centre for facilitating a creative and a safe space in which the PhD
cohort could explore these ideas. A special thank you to Carl Folke for
pushing us to be even more self-reflective of what this process meant for
our group, the research centre and us as individuals. Anna Emmelin sup-
ported us tirelessly with developing our thoughts around this issue.
Johanna Yletyinen made the drawing for Fig. 2. Thank you to Maria
Magolna Beky Winnerstam for expertly guiding us through forum theater
and for your performances. We thank all the session participants at the
Resilience 2014 conference, and the panelists who provided insightful
solutions. As current or former PhD students at the Stockholm Re-
silience Centre, the authors’ work was supported by a core
grant from Mistra, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental
Research. LJH was supported by the European Research Council under the
European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013)/ERC
Grant Agreement 283950 SES-LINK. We are grateful to Azote for the
design of Fig. 3, supported by the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Anony-
mous reviewers provided invaluable feedback and reflections for which we
are extremely grateful.
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creative
commons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distri-
bution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the
Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
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