ABSTRACT
Our intent in this chapter is to provide a new framing, aligned with the key tenets of transdisciplinarity, for meaningful doctoral assessment for transdisciplinary research. We do this by proposing quality criteria for use by candidates and examiners and suggesting modifi cations of the doctoral examination process. These contributions are based on both literature and our practice of decades of transdisciplinary doctoral research supervision and examination in the Australian context. The importance of our endeavour is easily justifi ed. Firstly, recent research on approaches to examination concluded that ‘the question of what PhD examiners are looking for when they read a doctoral student’s thesis and examine the candidate is complex, and could be described as elusive’ (Clarke and Lunt 2014). This statement was made in the context of disciplinary doctorates, without yet overlaying the intricacies and complexities of transdisciplinary research. Secondly, assessment of transdisciplinary research itself is a recently emerging fi eld and transdisciplinary doctoral assessment has not yet been tackled in the peer-reviewed literature.
