A defining moment for Institutes for Transdisciplinary Scholarship at UCalgary

At a UCalgary transdisciplinary scholarship gathering in July 2023, Dr. Steven Bryant, PhD, shared his vision of “a hub to learn, develop, expand on, and support transdisciplinary work being done across faculties at the UCalgary campus. It's a place where we come together to speak each other's languages by collectively bringing together diverse perspectives."

At the time, Ahead of Tomorrow, the university's 2023-2030 strategic plan, had just been announced. It cites transdisciplinary scholarship as a practice that can “lead to new connections and unforeseen discoveries, and a chance to tackle wicked challenges too big for one scholar or one discipline to solve on their own.”

Building up the transdisciplinary scholarship community 

One year later, Bryant reflects on how the campus community embraced what is now officially the Institutes for Transdisciplinary Scholarship (ITS). The recipe for success? Bryant, academic lead for ITS, describes it as a mix of “hard work, time, trust, and most importantly, collaborative efforts.”

In the past year, ITS put together the building blocks to improve connections between faculties and departments and enable shared analysis and collaboration.

The building blocks took shape in almost two dozen conferences, seminars, workshops, and events on transdisciplinary scholarship for academics, students, staff, community and industry. Additionally, the Transdisciplinary Connector Grants Program has enabled 117 UCalgary teams and their external partners to explore societal questions, challenges, and opportunities that demand a transdisciplinary approach.

'Transdisciplinary Scholarship: Breaking Boundaries for a Better Future'

Now, the ITS team is proud to share the efforts of the Calgary Institute for Humanities (CIH) and lead academics Drs. Jim Ellis (director, CIH), Petra Dolata (scholar in residence 2018-2023, CIH) and Görkem Aydemir Kundakci (transdisciplinary postdoctoral associate) exploring the meaning of transdisciplinary scholarship for UCalgary’s campus community. Their work draws on consultation with the UCalgary community as well as scholarship from around the world.

Their findings have been shared in the report “Transdisciplinary Scholarship: Breaking Boundaries for a Better Future.” It includes the UCalgary definition of transdisciplinarity:

• “Transdisciplinary scholarship is directed towards a complex issue or problem, most often one with a social dimension. Because of the complexity of the issue or problem, it is best addressed by teams of researchers from multiple disciplines. To address the social dimension of the question, transdisciplinary scholarship incorporates knowledges from outside the university, through theoretical or creative approaches to societal issues, and ideally by including societal actors who are implicated in the issue or problem in question.”

"We sought the support of The Calgary Institute for Humanities because we saw that some scholars curious or new to transdisciplinarity at the University of Calgary were expressing their desire for support in defining it. They also wanted to know how transdisciplinarity differed from other research paradigms such as multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, or participatory research,” says Dr. William Ghali, vice-president (research). 

"That’s why the work done by The Calgary Institute for Humanities is foundational to how we understand and communicate transdisciplinary scholarship across our campus."

“Due to the collaborative nature of transdisciplinarity, we see the definitional work as a living component. It will shift and shape as we continue to work together on complex issues or problems addressed by teams of researchers from multiple disciplines,” adds Bryant.

UCalgary’s growing culture of transdisciplinary inquiry

ITS is operating as a connection point for research institutes and scholars by facilitating knowledge transformation informed by multiple perspectives, including different ways of knowing and other forms of knowledge.

“The institutes are supporting scholars to collaborate within and beyond five core focus areas: Cities and Societies, Digital Worlds, Energy Futures, Health and Life, and Democracy, Justice, and Sustainability,” says Bryant. “By encouraging a transdisciplinary lens, we're seeing research teams that are stretching themselves in new ways to come up with novel solutions to address some of the pressing social concerns of our time.”

“It was exciting to learn about the tremendous transdisciplinary research that is already happening across campus,” says professor Jim Ellis. “Transdisciplinarity scholarship opens up new possibilities for addressing urgent social problems by drawing on existing disciplinary and interdisciplinary research strengths and transcending traditional boundaries.”

Professor Petra Dolata adds that by sharing the definitional components of transdisciplinarity, “It is scholarship directed towards a complex issue or problem, most often one with a social dimension. Because of the complexity of the issue or problem, it is best addressed by teams of researchers from multiple disciplines.

“To address the social dimension of the question, transdisciplinary scholarship also brings knowledge from outside the university, through theoretical or creative approaches to societal issues, and ideally by including societal actors who are implicated in the issue or problem in question.” 

Teams of scholars across UCalgary are embracing a growing culture of transdisciplinary inquiry. Projects as diverse as an art gallery exhibit showcasing water-related research (BRACKISH: A Transdisciplinary Exploration of Water), a team working on the ethical use of artificial intelligence (ethical use of AI in post-secondary), and an immersive dance experience on climate chaos (Just Breathe, Okâwîmâwaskiy) all contain integrated transdisciplinary components. 

“It’s up to us to go out and make an impact beyond singular disciplines to show what can result from collaboration,” says Ghali. “We have big challenges, and we need collective solutions to be more effective, a transdisciplinary approach allows just that — to make an impact and expand conversations to include other faculties such as law or humanities while also bringing an equal voice to the table on perspectives such as equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility.” 

Want to learn more?

Visit the Institutes for Transdisciplinary Scholarship website where you can read the report, “Transdisciplinary Scholarship: Breaking Boundaries for a Better Future,” meet the 16 new academic co-leads, and sign up to receive the latest news and events for transdisciplinarity at UCalgary.