Towards Transdisciplinarity: a Water Research Programme in Transition

A transition towards a transdisciplinary (TD) approach in science is increasingly called for, yet our understanding of how such transitions actually occur in practice remains limited. This paper analyses a Dutch water research programme in transition from a mono- to a TD structure. The main findings of the research are first that efforts to embed a TD approach stimulated interaction between different scientific disciplines (interdisciplinarity), but in some cases hampered the integration of non-academic knowledge and participation in research (co-creation). Second, the composition of TD research groups matters deeply; in our research, we found that practitioners had the biggest say, with consequences for research practice. Third, unlike the case of other studies on transdisciplinarity, most researchers in our study recognized the importance of integrating experiential knowledge in research.