ABSTRACT
Especially after the Second World War, public sector science underwent a rapid transformation, evolving toward so-called big science, organized around large-scale research consortia addressing various societal missions through publicly funded research. However, the reform of the science fabric by setting up large-scale expert-driven research consortia and panels—most notably the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC))—falls short of addressing the knowledge needs for organizing the society wide sustainability transformations called for by the current social and ecological crisis.
This chapter introduces the key features of transdisciplinary sustainability research, promoted as a novel approach to produce societally relevant, value-laden, and scientifically robust knowledge on sustainability transformations that transcends established boundaries among the scientific disciplines and between science and society. Transdisciplinary research raises major new challenges regarding designing appropriate institutional rules for governing research partnerships at various levels. The analysis in this chapter maps these various challenges in the context of a multi-level approach to collective action and introduces the key concepts and research questions of the book.
