No single academic discipline can deal with the increasingly complex problems facing society, which makes the need for transdisciplinary collaboration increasingly urgent.

This was one of the key messages delivered by lead speaker Professor Gabriele Bammer, inaugural President of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD Alliance), during the fifth international Transdisciplinary (TD) Dialogue hosted by the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Future Africa collaborative platform. The dialogue, held on 18 March, was chaired by Dr Hester du Plessis, Senior Research Fellow at Future Africa.

Prof Bammer said there is an increasing commitment to transdisciplinarity, which brings together disciplinary knowledge in higher education institutions and integrates it with decision-makers, business leaders and the people affected by the range of problems, as expressed in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

“Bringing together a diversity of knowledge sources, from both inside and outside the academy, is the best way to understand and address the problems we are facing, such as climate change, the water and food crisis, disease, trans-national migration, poverty and unemployment, to name a few. This is what transdisciplinarity sets out to achieve,” said Prof Bammer, who is the author of Disciplining Interdisciplinarity and teaches at the Australian National University (ANU), where she specialises in integration and implementation sciences.

The Transdisciplinary Dialogues series forms part of Future Africa’s Transformation through Transdisciplinary research programme, which was established to help TD practitioners engage in critical TD-focused dialogues; forge collaborative links worldwide; and reflect on the evolution of TD thinking and practice, funding and policy.

Prof Bammer explained that transdisciplinarity has evolved to the point that the expertise involved is now considered to be a specialisation in itself, hence the need to establish the ITD Alliance and grow its influence as a global forum to institutionalise transdisciplinarity.

“Silos are inevitable between disciplines, the academy, and social actors, so we need to build effective bridges through transdisciplinarity. We do this by encouraging individuals and institutions to develop and use transdisciplinary bridge-building skills to become members of the ITD Alliance,” she explained.

The ITD Alliance first met in 2019, and its global membership currently includes 400 individuals (mostly university researchers) as well as 30+ institutions (mostly universities). “The beauty of the ITD Alliance is that it recognises that we have a unique opportunity for the Global South and Global North to evolve transdisciplinarity together. Join us in seizing this opportunity!”

Prof Bammer’s home university, the ANU, is one of the global leaders in advancing transdisciplinarity. In 2022, it decided that all undergraduates should, by the time they graduate, be able to use their disciplinary skills for transdisciplinary problem-solving. To guide this process the university developed the ANU Framework for Transdisciplinary Problem Solving, which highlights the expertise students need to acquire. It also builds on the ANU’s drive to encourage students to do double-degrees, such as business and law or humanities and science.

“I jumped at the opportunity to get involved in this from the outset and to help put together transdisciplinary problem-solving resources for teaching and learning, research and engagement,” Bammer said.

“To offer an example: if you are looking at the issue of trans-national migration, you need to understand economics, politics, demography and psychology, to name a few disciplines, as well as what it’s like to be a trans-national migrant, an NGO providing services and a government department crafting policy, otherwise you are not going to understand the issue, or develop the best approach to managing it.”

Dr Calayde Davey, a Senior Lecturer in UP’s Department of Architecture and a panellist in the Transdisciplinary Dialogue, said, “The built environment transdisciplinary classroom should be fundamental to how we approach the challenges we face as architects, engineers, planners, economists and all the other stakeholders, including our clients and industry and government partners.

“We need to see it as an ‘us’ challenge or an ‘us’ problem that we put in the middle and deal with it as a common problem... We all need to be asking which construction materials should we be using as we are running out of sand and water… It’s all about sharing knowledge and creating a circular built environment together.”

Panellist Jason Oberholster from UP’s Department of Architecture discussed the practical impact and challenges of doing TD-based projects in collaboration with local, diverse communities, including power dynamics, different languages and data validation. He emphasised the importance of two-way knowledge dissemination and the need for clear terms of reference.

Panellist Professor Karina Landman, UP’s Head of the Department of Town and Regional Planning and Chair of the School of the Built Environment, said: “A growing number of researchers are pursuing transdisciplinary research, while others question why it should be on the research agenda. They feel what we need is in-depth disciplinary research. Of course we need this, but we also need to work together.”

She added that it is essential to grow recognition for transdisciplinarity in order to advocate for its recognition in policy and protocol. “At the moment, for example, the National Research Foundation (NRF) rating for researchers currently favours disciplinary research. We need to rise to the challenge and show that transdisciplinary research is just as focused.”

Bammer concluded: “We need to communicate what we are doing and make sure our politicians and other policy-makers are aware of the value of transdisciplinarity. We need to grow globally, set standards and build our professional associations so that we can influence funding, as well as education and research policy.”