Astra blog by Professor Aila Leena Matthies: Why transdisciplinary research is a promise towards sustainability

As the complexity of the environmental, ecological and social problems of our planet grows, so too does the awareness deepen that none can be solved without interconnecting them. However, collaborative research has clearly not gathered enough strength, since none of the 17 UN sustainable development goals for 2030 is closer to being met today than at the point when they were established.

Today, there is an emerging call for transdisciplinary research (or convergence research, the term used in a National Academies report in 2020). Transdisciplinary research promises more than cross-, inter-, and multidisciplinary research.

According to Willie Caldwell, “transdisciplinarity occurs when two or more discipline perspectives transcend each other to form a new holistic approach. The outcome will be completely different from what one would expect from the addition of the parts.”

The National Academies report highlights not only a deep integration of disciplines but makes a call to provide a positive societal impact. What is at stake is more than a game with words: the hope is that transdisicplinarity transcends, is transformative and translates into meaningful societal applications.

For us in the newly EU-funded project ASTRA (2020–2024) coordinated by JYU, transdisciplinary translates into a new exiting combination of sustainability research and social work. It emphasises not only co-creation of new knowledge across disciplines but also beyond them. In this way, it essentially transcends the boundaries and hierarchies of ways of knowing and discovering, and includes non-academic agencies, practitioners, local communities, service-users of social work and other societal actors.

While preparing our proposal for the European Commission we got surprised about the conceptual parallels between transdisciplinary sustainability research (TSTR) and the particular approach of practice research of social work. This direction of social work research is based on co-creative understanding of knowledge. Applying critical theory, this transformative research is interested in problem-solving in the real-life context of the participating people.

On the concreate level, ASTRA research at JYU will examine the following issues, among others:

• how local environmental issues impact vulnerable communities and how social work gets involved in such cross-sectoral contexts

• what kind of perspectives circular economy can offer young people facing precarity

• the dynamics of contributive justice for achieving the sustainable wellbeing of migrant youth in rural environments in Europe.

Fifteen candidates as early-stage researchers have now been selected out of 178 applicants from across the globe. In June 2021, they will start work in the ASTRA project at seven European universities and two research agencies. In four years, we hope to have established a new research area, which will provide a transformative contribution to social work as well as to sustainability.