TdAcademy workshop with students of the Sustainability Science Master's programme
2024-11-10
Around 60 students on the Master's programme in Sustainability Science are currently working for two semesters on one of three transdisciplinary research projects with urban stakeholders. At the end of October, representatives of the research and community platform for transdisciplinarity tdAcademy came to Leuphana University to reflect with the students on the influence of context factors, formats and methods on their own research work. In a three-and-a-half-hour workshop, they introduced the students to the topics and led a reflection and discussion on the significance of these for their own project work.
The importance of context and format for the students' td research projects
Which contextual factors influence their own work, whether these tend to promote or hinder the transdisciplinary nature of the project, which methods the groups have already used or would like to use and why this is not possible - all of this was discussed by the thirteen working groups, first within their own working group and then with members of other working groups and research projects.
Similar experiences with context and formats despite different research projects
The exchange between the working groups, which allowed them to think ‘outside the box’, showed that the students' work is largely influenced by similar contextual factors despite the different research projects and practice partners. For example, the time constraints imposed by the curricular integration of the research project or different types of knowledge were mentioned. There was also the question of the extent to which their own research work is actually transdisciplinary. This question was raised, for example, by the fact that tasks were not developed jointly, but were already fixed at the beginning of the research project. Finding out that this question concerns various working groups and research projects made it easier for the students to a certain extent. .