Who we are

The tdAcademy is a research and community platform for transdisciplinarity. As a project, we conduct research on central topics of transdisciplinary research and strengthen the joint production of knowledge. With our website we support the direct exchange of researchers through new community offers and information on events and projects.

The tdAcademy pursues three objectives:

  • First, developing and consolidating state of the art insights within the transdisciplinary research community (“Research”).
  • Second, providing high quality capacity building opportunities for transdisciplinary researchers (“Enable”).
  • Third, supporting and further developing the transdisciplinary research community by providing a space for exchange, reflection, collaboration, and new ideas (“Connect”).

The international community is actively involved in the project through a group of supporting partner institutions as well as a guest and fellow program.

tdAcademy Team

Emilia Nagy

Center for Technology and Society (ZTG), Technische Universität Berlin

view profile contact

Prof. Dr. Dr.

Martina Schäfer

Center for Technology and Society (ZTG), Technische Universität Berlin

view profile contact

Project Partners & Funding

The founding partners of tdAcademy are four institutions with a proven track record in transdisciplinary research:

  • ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research
  • Leuphana University Lüneburg,
  • Center for Technology and Society (ZTG) at Technische Universität Berlin
  • Oeko-Institut e.V.

The following institutions are involved in the second project phase of the tdAcademy (June 2023 to May 2025):

  • ISOE - Institute for Social-Ecological Research
  • KIT - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
  • Center for Technology and Society (ZTG) at Technische Universität Berlin
  • Oeko-Institut e.V.

The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the framework of the Strategy „Research for Sustainability" (FONA) as part of its Social-Ecological Research funding priority. The guest and fellowship program is funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

Supporting Partners

tdAcademy lives through exchange within the community. Therefore, the group of supporting partners will closely involve other academic institutions within the German-speaking and international community to jointly conduct, promote, and shape transdisciplinary research. 

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christine Ahrend

TU Berlin

Photo Bausch

Dr. Camilla Bausch

Ecologic Institut Europa

Prof. Dr. Birgit Blättel-Mink

Institut für Soziologie, Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main

Prof. Dr. phil. Dipl.-Ing. Stefan Böschen

Human Technology Center (HumTec), RWTH Aachen

Tobias Buser

Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity - ITD Alliance

Dr. Dr. Guido Caniglia

Konrad-Lorenz-Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI)

Rico Defila

Programm Mensch-Gesellschaft-Umwelt, Universität Basel

Prof. Dr. Andreas Ernst

Universität Kassel

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Manfred Fischedick

Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie

seit April 2022 gewähltes Mitglied der tdAcademy-Steuerungsgruppe im Tandem mit Annika Rehm

Univ. Prof. Dr. Christoph Görg

Institut für Soziale Ökologie (SEC), Wien

Dr. Antonietta Di Guilio

Programm Mensch-Gesellschaft-Umwelt, Universität Basel

Prof. Dr. Matthias Groß

Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung (UFZ)

Prof. Dr. Armin Grunwald

Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung und Systemanalyse (ITAS)

Willi Haas

Dr. Willi Haas

Universität für Bodenkultur Wien

Prof. Dr. sc. agr. Katharina Helming

Leibniz-Zentrum für Agrarlandschaftsforschung (ZALF)

Dr. Sabine Hoffmann

Eawag

seit April 2022 gewähltes Mitglied der tdAcademy-Steuerungsgruppe

Prof. Dr. Daniela Jacob

Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS)

Thomas Korbun

Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung (IÖW)

Dr. Kora Kristof

Vizepräsidentin Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

Dr. Pius Krütli

TdLab, ETH Zürich

Prof. Dr. Sabine Maasen

Wissenschafts- und Innovationsforschung, Universität Hamburg

Prof. Dr. Patrizia Nanz

Bundesamt für die Sicherheit der nuklearen Entsorgung (BASE)

Prof. Dr. Jörg Niewöhner

Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems (IRI THESys), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Prof. Dr. Benjamin Nölting

Hochschule für nachhaltige Entwicklung Eberswalde (HNEE)

Dr. Steffi Ober

Zivilgesellschaftliche Plattform Forschungswende, NABU Deutschland

Prof. Dr. Martina Padmanabhan

Universität Passau

Theres Paulsen

Network for Transdisciplinary Research (td-net), Akademien der Wissenschaften Schweiz

Dr. Christian Erik Pohl

USYS TdLab, ETH Zürich

Prof. Dr. Michael Pregernig

Institut für Umweltsozialwissenschaften und Geographie, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

Prof. Dr. Henrike Rau

Mensch-Umwelt-Beziehungen, LMU München

Ortwin Renn

Prof. Dr. Ortwin Renn

Institut für transformative Nachhaltigkeitsforschung (IASS)

Prof. Dr. Simone Rödder

Institut für Soziologie, Universität Hamburg

Dr. Flurina Schneider

ISOE - Institute for Social-Ecological Research

Prof. Dr. Michael Stauffacher

TdLab, ETH Zürich

Birge Wolf

Universität Kassel

Prof. Dr. Sophia Becker

TU Berlin

Hon.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Bergmann

ISOE - Institute for Social-Ecological Research

Interviews with the group of Supporting Partners' representatives

Video: Christian Pohl on the tdAcademy

Christian Pohl, elected member of the tdAcademy Steering Committee, talks about his role and the importance of the tdAcademy group of Supporting Partners.

learn more

Video: Simone Rödder on the tdAcademy

Simone Rödder, elected member of the tdAcademy Steering Committee, talks about her role and the importance of the tdAcademy group of Supporting Partners.

learn more

Work Structure

tdAcademy strengthens the knowledge base, further development and networking in transdisciplinary research via a working mode that closely interlinks the modules "Research", "Enable" and "Connect" with their various activities.

Working Structure tdAcademy

The tdAcademy strengthens the knowledge base, advancement, and networking of transdisciplinary research through a working mode that interconnects the modules of "Researching," "Enabling," and "Connecting" with their respective activities.

During the first phase of the project (June 2020 - May 2023), the focus of the tdAcademy was on four topic lines that explore key questions of transdisciplinary research:

  1. The societal impacts of transdisciplinary research, building upon the insights from the predecessor project TransImpact.
  2. The scientific impacts of transdisciplinary research, which have been less explored to date.
  3. Dealing with contextual dependencies concerning the generalizability of context-specific findings and the implementation of transdisciplinary research in different cultural contexts.
  4. Exploring new formats for conducting transdisciplinary research or incorporating specific participatory concepts that have the potential to enrich transdisciplinary research.

During the second phase of the project (June 2023 - May 2025), the focus is on gaining a better understanding of the intersections between the topic lines in order to identify synergies and contradictions. At the same time, the substantive work within the topic lines will be continued.

TransImpact

tdAcademy succeeds TransImpact. The results from the completed research project TransImpact will be available in English soon. For each of the central topics – i.e. problem definition, participation of societal actors, knowledge integration and transferability of results – recommendations and methods for an adaptive shaping of transdisciplinary research processes to foster societal effects will be provided. TransImpact was carried out by ISOE – Institute for Social-Ecological Research and the Center for Technology and Society (ZTG) at Technische Universität Berlin between 2015 and 2019 (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research).

TransImpact_approach_Figure

TransImpact approach to fostering potential societal effectiveness of transdisciplinary research
(Source: Lux et al. 2019: 189)

TransImpact Downloads

Transimpact

tdAcademy folgt auf TransImpact. Die Ergebnisse aus dem abgeschlossenen Forschungsprojekt TransImpact bleiben zugänglich. Für jedes der vier zentralen Themen Problemkonstitution, Partizipation gesellschaftlicher Akteure, Wissensintegration und Übertragbarkeit der Ergebnisse werden Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten und Methoden angeboten, mit deren Hilfe transdisziplinär Forschende das Potenzial zur Wirksamkeit ihrer Projekte erhöhen können. TransImpact wurde von 2015-2019 gemeinsam vom ISOE – Institut für sozial-ökologische Forschung und dem Zentrum Technik und Gesellschaft der Technischen Universität Berlin durchgeführt (gefördert vom BMBF).

TransImpact-Ansatz_Abbildung

TransImpact-Ansatz zur Stärkung gesellschaftlicher Wirkungspotentiale transdisziplinärer Forschung
(Quelle: Lux et al. 2019: 189, eigene Übersetzung)

PDF-Downloads zu TransImpact