International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019

The International Transdisciplinary Conference 2019, co-organised by the University of Gothenburg and Mistra Urban Futures, takes place 10 to 13 September 2019 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Our societies are facing critical points in their development, where large challenges are becoming increasingly difficult to handle. Numerous conflicts and complexities are surfacing – to which we can see societies responding with fragmentation, intolerance and exclusion. One way to address such developments is through societal transformation processes that implicitly include a variety of interest groups, stakeholders and organisations. Transdisciplinary research is one approach that focuses specifically on co-producing and integrating knowledge and expertise from a variety of sources, including communities, research, cities and businesses. It is an approach that is driven by the need to create processes where values and transformations towards a more just and sustainable society are openly debated.

The aim of this conference, Joining Forces for Change, is to bring together actors from different professional mandates, disciplines and sectors to engage and discuss practical examples and case studies that approach societal transformation through boundary breaking collaboration. The conference invites practitioners and researchers from government and administrative organisations and agencies, interest groups from community and business, and researchers and students from across the university. The overall focus is on what we can learn from our collaborative experiences, case studies and practices regarding wider societal transformation, methodological innovations and theoretical development. We will specifically search for “sites for change” in terms of spaces, practices and learnings where TD research and co-production play a crucial role.

The conference programme will be structure around three streams:

Societal transformation

• What experiences in initiating and fostering transformation processes do we have and what can we learn from them?
• How can different theories of change contribute to sustainable transformations?
• What forms of organising are needed for our institutions, agencies, companies and universities to handle the necessary transformations, with particular reference to collaboration between different types of stakeholders?
• What skills and competences are needed by civil servants, researchers and students to co-design and lead processes that target sustainable outcomes?

Methodological innovation

• What does individual and organisational learning in change processes – working on, challenging and transgressing borders – look like?
• How can universities promote collaborative learning?
• How can different types of transdisciplinary pedagogies, research methods and processes of co-production be developed to more effectively contribute to societal transformations?

Theoretical development

• How can we imagine and conceptualise a sustainable and inclusive knowledge economy?
• What are the core challenges in transdisciplinary research regarding ontological and epistemological issues – what worldviews and paradigms are challenged and what kind of knowledge is included and produced?
• How does TD research engage with systems thinking, scenario planning, design thinking and other holistic theories and practices?

Call for contributions
Contributions from all fields and research cultures are invited, particularly submissions from practitioners and from transdisciplinary teams.