ABSTRACT
This chapter is an explicitly personal reflection that draws on the author’s experiences – as researcher, mentor and consultant – of transdisciplinary sustainability research. The aim is not to present a systematic conceptualisation of transdisciplinary social-ecological research that could be used to justify the general validity of its conclusions. Rather, I draw on personal experience to reflect on the synergies that exist between sustainability and gender research, and to discuss the problems, insights and transdisciplinarity applications associated with the two research fields. Constraints and risks experienced include (1) lack of clarity on the degree and nature of the involvement of researchers and practice partners and on how to manage the relations between them; (2) the problem of ‘partisanship’ and its impact on research in an area of tension between economics and politics; and (3) the difficulties involved in integration of knowledge gained in collective research, and specifically the integration of scientific and lifeworld knowledge. Principal challenges include how to overcome ingrained differences and competing interests, to avoid conflicts, and find win-win solutions. The final section explores the opportunities of transdisciplinary socio-ecological research, above all arising from the (self-)reflexivity of researchers in the process of transdisciplinary knowledge generation.
