ABSTRACT
Outside observers of transdisciplinary research, who are expecting rigorous methods at work proceeding in well-defined steps, might get confused by the chaotic process they perceive. This is, amongst other things, because in transdisciplinary research several purposes overlap: transdisciplinary research should (a) take into account bodies of knowledge from within and beyond academia; (b) balance and integrate these bodies of knowledge to attain a comprehensive understanding of an issue; and (c) provide results that are useful and relevant for a given problem (d) in a particular context. Each project will navigate between these purposes depending on the projects’ particular goals and competences. What looks chaotic from the outside is therefore a sign of the highly adaptive way of doing transdisciplinary research. Furthermore, it is a sign of a form of research without standardized theories, methods and a widely accepted state of the art.
