UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS CAN WE LEARN FROM TRANSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH ACROSS CASE STUDIES?

Transdisciplinary (TD) research is increasingly evoked to tackle wicked problems of global environmental change (GEC), addressing complexity by accounting for diverse perceptions of problems in the process of co-production of... [ view full abstract ]

Transdisciplinary (TD) research is increasingly evoked to tackle wicked problems of global environmental change (GEC), addressing complexity by accounting for diverse perceptions of problems in the process of co-production of systems, target, and transformation knowledge. However a key yet neglected issue in TD research entails scaling and transferring this knowledge across cases as a central quality attribute, particularly in transformation knowledge where inferences on the suitability of solutions that work in one context into another context are often done on implicit assumptions. Case studies in TD research differ from case studies in applied or ideographic research given the context specificity and purpose of co-produced knowledge, requiring a focus on structure and conditions for transferability as means to address this methodological gap in TD research. We point at respective considerations in kindred fields such as philosophy of science to focus on structure and conditions for transferability in TD research as a starting point.