[email protected] wrote:
1. advice on transdisciplinary research (idil gaziulusoy)
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).
Hello Idil,
You will find that nothing is unrelated to sustainability, let alone
sustainable development.
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?
I have found helpful to plan backwards, i.e., first I define the desired
end product (for example, the content of a dissertation) then go back
and determine what information I need to write the final content; and I
keep going back recursively until I get to things I know or know I can
get.
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. )
Get the committee members to be an interdisciplinary team and schedule
meetings with them at each (or some) steps while developing the research
plan backwards, as in point 1 above. You may have to provide candy or
some other incentive to get them to meet, but it is critical that they
experience the headaches that ensue from interdisciplinary discussions.
3. How to manage possible departmental/faculty/supervisory objections to
transdisciplinarity?
Sustainability in intrinsically interdisciplinary. Google up some items
about "dimensions of sustainable development" or "trade-offs in
sustainable development." Then put together a table or diagram of how
each discipline enters into sustainable development decisions. For
instance, take the 8 UN millennium development goals
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
and correlate each of them with all the disciplines required to achieve
each goal. A more classical example is balancing consumption and
conservation goals. This requires the participation of, among others,
demographers, economists, sociologists, psychologists, biologists,
ecologists, ...... The following diagram is very useful to visualize the
need for inter-disciplinarity in this balancing act:
http://www.ecocosmdynamics.org/ED/fig16.asp
If they are not convinced after this, better start looking for another
committee.
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.
Insist on at least one members being an expert in interdisciplinary
research. I am the best of course, but I am far away ... <g>
5. How to make sure that the justifications (about the need, quality,
contribution etc.)I put forward are not tautological?
I have never seen this happen in interdisciplinary team meetings. The
reason is that the representatives of the various disciplines keep each
other honest. I have seen tantrums though .... <g>
6. anything that I am overlooking at the moment but you think to be
important...
At the end of the day, one of the most difficult things to do is to
integrate all the interdisciplinary inputs in a form that is concise and
easy to understand. People put together various kinds of tables and
diagrams (which may become "spaghetti charts"). I have found that the
following tools, with supporting software, are very helpful:
The "interdependency square matrices," also known as "design structure
matrix" or "dependency structure matrix" -- see, for example:
Tutorial:
http://www.dsmweb.org/
Web-based tool:
http://www.icaen.uiowa.edu/~ankusiak/algorithm.html
Supporting software (PSM32):
http://problematics.com/
The "causal-loop diagrams" used for "system dynamics" modeling -- see,
for example:
Tutorials:
http://www.thesystemsthinker.com/tstgdlines.html
http://filebox.vt.edu/artsci/geology/mclean/Dinosaur_Volcano_Extinction/pages/earthcau.html
Web-based tool:
http://www.iseesystems.com/softwares/player/iseeplayer.aspx
Supporting software: ISEE or POWERSIM
http://www.iseesystems.com
http://www.powersim.com
Any of these tools, however, requires a learning curve.
Goodness, getting late ... best wishes in your project.
Luis
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