ABSTRACT
Transdisciplinary research for sustainability requires the integration of different forms of knowledge. The demand for synthesis is even greater if researchers work not only across disciplines and beyond academia, but also across cultures. The Indo-German international transdisciplinary research project BioDIVA aimed to develop transformation knowledge for sustainable agricultural futures in Kerala, South India. This chapter uses the BioDIVA project as a case study to identify patterns that emerged in work with disciplinary, but intercultural tandems in a transdisciplinary setting. A tandem consists of two disciplinary, administrative or managerial contributing partners from cooperating countries. By sharing my subjective experience of working as a team leader with five tandems and being a member of one, I adopt a storytelling approach to explore options for disciplinary tandems performing under the conditions of a transdisciplinarity and interculturality to understand the potentials and risks of this structural arrangement. I conclude that tandems offer unique opportunities for critical self-reflection among members of intercultural and transdisciplinary research teams engaged in sustainability research. However, to be successful, tandems require careful and sympathetic management that considers the (disciplinary) interests of individual researchers as well as the wider transdisciplinary aims of the research project.
