![]() It is part of the CCES (Competence Center Environment and Sustainability) winter school Science Meets Practice ( Stauffacher et al. We have used the 10-step approach widely. In the meantime, it consists of ten steps and we are able to carry it out in one day. In Stellenbosch, this process consisted of six steps and it took a week. We provided the participants with flipchart sheets and asked them to document their reflections about the steps we went through. To make the process interactive, we alternated between short theoretical inputs and longer phases during which participants related what they had just heard to their own research projects. Second, they were to reflect about which disciplines and what societal actors should be involved to help embed the project in science and society. The research question of each project was the starting point: first, the researchers were asked to think about how their research question related to the societal problem they wanted to help solve. ![]() We decided to organize the integration and adaptation tasks as a co-production of knowledge by both the researchers and the transdisciplinarity experts. We were invited as transdisciplinarity experts to help align PhD candidates’ and postdocs’ research projects with the principles and practices of td research. In 2011 two of the authors held a summer school on td research at the TsamaHUBCentre of the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. How and by whom could this integration and adaptation be accomplished? The problem with these abstract principles and practical tools is that researchers who are not familiar with td research do not know how to adapt or integrate them to their research project. The online toolboxes described in GAIA’s series on Toolkits for Transdisciplinarity present such methods regularly (e.g., Bammer 2016). 2012, Gaziulusoy and Boyle 2013, Vogel et al. In addition, methods and tools have been proposed regarding how to address specific challenges of td research ( Bergmann et al. 2012), or provide guidelines for research for sustainable development ( Wiesmann and Hurni 2011, Pintér et al. 2008, Carew and Wickson 2010, Lang et al. A number of publications provide general transdisciplinarity principles and present case studies ( Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn 2007, Hirsch Hadorn et al. This shift of interest required a different kind of contribution, one that would act as a bridge between td research methods and other research projects. A few years later, the questions had changed and focused on how td research should be conducted, and how to align other types of research projects with the td approach. Ten years ago, when we were invited to present the transdisciplinary (td) research approach in PhD schools or at conferences, questions mainly concerned the definition of transdisciplinarity and how it differs from interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity. The feedback we have obtained clearly indicates that the 10-step approach is a very useful tool: It provides a systematic procedure for thinking through ways to better link research to societal problem solving. Ten questions guide discussions between transdisciplinarity experts and researchers around research issues, identify and review the societal problems addressed, identify relevant actors and disciplines, and clarify the purpose and form of the interaction with them. We have successfully applied this approach in numerous workshops, summer schools, and seminars at ETH Zurich and beyond. We are developing a 10-step approach for joint use by transdisciplinarity experts and researchers about how to best align their research projects with the requirements of transdisciplinarity. If researchers are unfamiliar with transdisciplinary research, they may miss opportunities to adapt these principles and tools to their research projects. Over the past decade, experts in transdisciplinary research have developed numerous principles, methods, and tools for making research more societally relevant. Today, there is an increasing need for researchers to demonstrate the practical value their research can generate for society. We propose to improve this situation by means of a 10-step approach aimed at stimulating explicit reflections around ways to render research more societally relevant. While the goal of transdisciplinary research is to be relevant to society, specific instructions for accomplishing this remain implicit.
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