transdisciplinarity

FILOtypes

more than one approach,

less than many

T

transdisciplinarity and beyond...

Calls for transdisciplinary approaches are becoming louder, as research objects prove time and again to exceed our categories and disciplinary expectations. Yet, little guidance is offered as to how to practice transdisciplinarity. What’s worse, the expectation is often that individual researchers will handle the extra work of transdisciplinary engagement on their own.

And indeed, reaching beyond one's own field is useful, and even crucial in the current landscape of knowledge-making. Issues like the informational deluge of Big Data, the crisis of readability in scientific literature, the transformations in academic publishing industries, as well as the urgency of collaborations between social and natural scientists in shaping better environmental governance (just to name a few urgent concerns) make evident how vital transdisciplinary mediations are. But they should not be always an added weight for researchers to handle alone!

For this reason, I put my competences at the service of researchers and students to help them navigate transdisciplinary mediations through editing and attending to their texts.

Rather than taking transdisciplinarity as a coherent and clearly defined holistic approach as many do, in my work transdisciplinarity is about paying attention to the mediations that take place as we move between different audiences and knowledge-systems: for instance, many terms, concepts, or methods, despite being used in a variety of fields, often mean something different to each specialist. Keeping track of these transformations, and how best to navigate them, is what transdisciplinary developmental editing is about.

Combining this attention to details with storytelling and careful writing, I believe, can help making scientific writing more engaging, more clear, and more successful. What's more, good transdisciplinary practices can make research more sensitive to its own diversity, more open to critique, and honest about its limitations. I believe that taking transdisciplinarity seriously, while navigating the concerns and needs of different disciplines as well as of my clients, is the best way to push knowledge-making out of its entrenched epistemic pettiness and to get closer to the ideals of decolonial, antihegemonic, and just sciences.

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for communication

Even within specialistic fields, jargon, implicit assumptions, and the idiosyncrasies of personal approaches as well as language use can create obstacles and make it harder for your readers to get your point.

A transdisciplinary approach to editing helps facilitate communication, especially when your audience doesn't necessarily know or have interest in your own specific field.

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communication

for impact

Making your text accessible and clear for a broader audience, beyond disciplinary trenches, also means that more people can read, understand, and use your work.

In this sense, transdisciplinarity makes an important contribution in extending and amplifying the impact of your work, by bringing it to a wider audience, while keeping your results and arguments clear.

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impact

better science

for better science

Crossing disciplinary boundaries facilitates serendipitous cross-pollinations and unexpected exchanges – the beating heart of research of any kind. These intersections and mediations are crucial to keep knowledge-making from settling in entrenched power structures and their pettiness. Sharper writing can facilitate these exchanges, making knowledge more accessible and engaging.

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In this sense, transdisciplinarity helps embrace what feminist scholars of technosciences call ‘successor sciences’: knowledge-making projects that critically engage with the histories, practices and politics of how we know the world in order to bring forth better objectivities and more just knowledge-making practices. Better navigating transdisciplinarity, I believe my clients will facilitate and amplify the possibilities for future knowledge-making to become more self-critical, honest, and aware of its own limits.