16: Power in transdisciplinary collaboration (Laurens Hessels, Julia Wittmayer, Tessa de Geus, Esther Baar)
Promoted by research funders and governments worldwide, transdisciplinary research (TDR) is growing. TDR is a form of research in which researchers and practitioners collaborate, integrating scientific and practical knowledge for better worlds. The expectation is that knowledge integration will help to address complex societal challenges, and to contribute to sustainability transitions. A relatively new topic of study and concern is the role of power in TDR. Lately, TDR has started to be criticized for not acknowledging societal power dynamics and reproducing them, valuing certain and silencing other knowledges, or not being open to participation for certain groups (e.g. Norström et al. 2020, Schipper et al. 2019). Also, building on studies of power in transitions and in other social contexts, scholars are beginning to explore how power influences the collaboration in TDR teams, the quality of their work and the impact on transitions (Fritz & Binder 2020, Struminska-Kutra & Scholl 2022). Because of the heterogeneity of partners involved, they differ strongly in terms of knowledge, reputation, financial influence. Together with factors like gender, ethnicity, and race these can create large power differences within a TDR team. The focus on the importance of leadership in the TDR literature suggests that some forms of power can contribute to successful knowledge integration and the generation of societal impact. Conversely, other forms can hinder knowledge integration, which can have a number of negative consequences.
Moreover, when existing power asymmetries are represented and enacted in a TDR team, they may not be well equipped to develop ground-breaking ideas and challenge the status quo. In addition, power abuse can form a threat to research quality and integrity. Participants may mobilize different sources of power, such as reputation, personality, social capital or financial influence. Based on these sources they can disturb the equality in the team, silence specific voices, hinder collaboration, block particular research directions, or reject a specific conclusion.
In this track we aim to bring together a range of contributions covering power in TDR. We welcome papers addressing questions such as (but not limited to):
1. How to avoid the reproduction of existing power imbalances in TDR collaboration?
2. How does TDR empower certain groups and disempower others?
3. How can one repoliticize the research process by problematizing power relations in relation to the societal issue at hand?
4. How do power differences between TDR collaborators influence transdisciplinary collaboration?
5. How to define and maintain scientific quality and integrity in a transdisciplinary project with significant power asymmetry?
6. How to use power in a responsible way to facilitate knowledge integration or create research impact?
Keywords: transdisciplinarity, collaboration, co-creation, participation, representation