Transdisciplinary education & competency development
Our education programme trains bachelor’s and master’s students in competencies required to facilitate and participate in multi-actor processes. Thereafter, we continue to support alumni through network meetings and our Graduate School’s PhD programme.
We train practitioners and policymakers in reflexive practices during project collaborations, preparing them to participate in, or independently lead and train others in multi-actor interactions, for example in Living Labs.
In addition, we create versatile tools and guidelines, as well as customised roadmaps, policy advice and transition pathways, to further guide transformation-oriented work in academia, policy and practice. A prime example is our book Transdisciplinarity for Transformation: Responding to Societal Challenges through Multi-Actor, Reflexive Practices.
Embedding reflexive practices
At the same time, we are committed to creating environments in which the acquired competencies can be applied and further developed. In other words, we strive to embed transdisciplinarity in science, policy and practice.
Institutionalisation in academia
A notable highlight is the full integration of the STS Making & Doing programme into academic conferences in the field of Science, Technology & Society (STS). This programme encourages scholars to creatively apply and share STS insights by leveraging competencies for transdisciplinarity.
More broadly, we work on the institutionalisation of transdisciplinarity in academia by advancing academic theory, publishing our findings open access, and thereby enriching the body of knowledge, guide future research, and informing systemic transformation. Furthermore, we advocate for a central role for transdisciplinarity in rethinking universities’ roles in society. We foster this, for example, through our involvement in the European university network ‘Aurora’, and on university level through the appointment of a University Research Chair on transdisciplinary strategies for sustainable development and system transformation.
Institutionalisation in policy and practice
To integrate transdisciplinarity into policy and practice, we build long-term partnerships. Our enduring collaboration with the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), for example, ensures Athena’s involvement in Dutch environmental and climate policy development. Along with that, we establish strategic partnerships with practitioners in the field through endowed chairs. This enables us to stay at the forefront of developments in the respective fields.
Empowering like-minded initiatives
Our final step towards sustaining transformations is to collaborate in establishing like-minded initiatives, such as the India Centre for Transdisciplinary Research. This centre advances transdisciplinary practices to improve mental health in India. We offer the centre targeted workshops and trainings, as well as PhD education by building on flows of knowledge and expertise between our academic partner Madras School of Social Work, and NGO partner The Banyan Academy for Leadership in Mental Health. These trainings strengthen the competencies needed to accelerate their endeavours, while the PhD education ensures strong ties with the international literature on transdisciplinarity for transformation.