The role of transdisciplinarity in building a decolonial bridge between science, policy, and practice
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Standard
In: GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, Vol. 32, No. 1, 23.05.2023, p. 107-114.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - The role of transdisciplinarity in building a decolonial bridge between science, policy, and practice
AU - Zonta, Aymara Llanque
AU - Jacobi, Johanna
AU - Mukhovi, Stellah M.
AU - Birachi, Eliud
AU - von Groote, Per
AU - Abad, Carmenza Robledo
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors; licensee oekom. This Open Access article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).
PY - 2023/5/23
Y1 - 2023/5/23
N2 - Transdisciplinary research is considered to offer contributions of science to sustainability transformations, partly because transdisciplinary approaches aim to increase the relevance, credibility, and legitimacy of scientific research by ensuring the active participation of non-academic actors in research. However, the possible impact of transdisciplinary research on decolonial sustainability science – understood as actively undoing Euro-North American centricity, dispossession, racism, and ongoing power imbalances in inequitable social-ecological systems – and simultaneous response to scientific rigor remain under debate. Thus, this article assesses the contributions of transdisciplinary research projects to decolonial sustainability science based on empirical information. To do so, we analyze a sample of 43 development research projects of the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme) in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We found that despite significant differences in approaches, Global-North-dominated sustainability science still has far to go to achieve the decolonial potential of transdisciplinarity, enabling different actors’ participation.
AB - Transdisciplinary research is considered to offer contributions of science to sustainability transformations, partly because transdisciplinary approaches aim to increase the relevance, credibility, and legitimacy of scientific research by ensuring the active participation of non-academic actors in research. However, the possible impact of transdisciplinary research on decolonial sustainability science – understood as actively undoing Euro-North American centricity, dispossession, racism, and ongoing power imbalances in inequitable social-ecological systems – and simultaneous response to scientific rigor remain under debate. Thus, this article assesses the contributions of transdisciplinary research projects to decolonial sustainability science based on empirical information. To do so, we analyze a sample of 43 development research projects of the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme) in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. We found that despite significant differences in approaches, Global-North-dominated sustainability science still has far to go to achieve the decolonial potential of transdisciplinarity, enabling different actors’ participation.
KW - decoloniality
KW - participation
KW - research for sustainable development
KW - transdisciplinarity
KW - use of knowledge
KW - Transdisciplinary studies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85164905736&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/0f5e53d3-4ee8-393b-ac36-52ace7abe567/
U2 - 10.14512/gaia.32.1.7
DO - 10.14512/gaia.32.1.7
M3 - Journal articles
AN - SCOPUS:85164905736
VL - 32
SP - 107
EP - 114
JO - GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society
JF - GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society
SN - 0940-5550
IS - 1
ER -