Hi Everyone,
I am a PhD student in Sustainability Engineering Programme, University of Auckland, New Zealand. I am seeking some advice from those who are doing, have finalised or are supervising/have supervised transdisciplinary PhD projects in sustainability related topics. My research aim is to develop a scenario method for product development teams of manufacturing companies so that they can plan for and get involved in long-term system-level innovation. The literatures I consult cover sustainability science, system innovation theory, innovation management, product design, futures studies and some emerging combinations of these areas like "design futures" (my label, not convention). I'd appreciate any advice, insight and experience about overcoming the below issues: 1. How to manage the research process since generally the methodology is not determined at the outset but evolves? How to avoid significant time-losses due to doing something completely unnecessary for the overall research or not doing something necessary timely enough? 2. How to make sure that everyone in the committee share a common understanding about your research? The committee members are not always well-informed about characteristics of transdisciplinary research but they're there because of their expertise in the particular disciplinary contexts which are relevant to the research (e.g in my case a professor from mechanical engineering is an advisor because of his expertise in product development but he is not familiar with the theory around, for example, formative evaluation of research instead of summative evaluation, which makes communication quite hard and creates a risk of either misguidance or no guidance at all. ) 3. How to manage possible departmental/faculty/supervisory objections to transdisciplinarity? 4. What to consider in selection of the examiners? (Even though I am not going to select the examiners, I'll most probably be unofficially consulted about who has relevant expertise to examine my thesis.) It's very hard to pinpoint any "expert" whose expertise covers all of the disciplinary areas my research digs into and integrates them in the way that is integrated in my particular project. 5. How to make sure that the justifications (about the need, quality, contribution etc.)I put forward are not tautological? 6. anything that I am overlooking at the moment but you think to be important... Thank you so much in advance. Kind regards, A. Idil Gaziulusoy Ph.D. Candidate The University of Auckland Sustainability Engineering Programme Phone: +64 9 2730600 (ext. 7967) "Since every particle in your body goes back to the first flaring forth of space and time, you're really as old as the universe. So when you are lobbying at your congressperson's office, or visiting your local utility, or testifying at a hearing on nuclear waste, or standing up to protect an old grove of redwoods, you are doing that not out of some personal whim, but in the full authority of your 15 billions years." -Joanna Macy *Cave ab homine unius libri.* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.learningforsustainability.net/pipermail/intsci_learningforsustainability.net/attachments/20090119/799801b5/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ IntSci mailing list [email protected] http://mail.learningforsustainability.net/mailman/listinfo/intsci_learningforsustainability.net
