Interdisciplinarity & Transdisciplinarity (ECR RoRSS)

Part of the ECR Research on Research Seminar Series.

Anne-Sophie Schaltegger, ETH Zürich

A social and cultural perspective on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research assessment: learning from three Swiss funding schemes

Research assessment mechanisms are still considered one of the main barriers to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research (IDR/TDR). Particularly in the funding domain, criteria and processes used to evaluate the quality of IDR/TDR proposals, or to monitor the progress of funded IDR/TDR projects, create biases against collaborative, boundary-spanning research. To be able to develop adequate solutions, more knowledge is needed about the current lived realities and experiences of actors involved in IDR/TDR assessment: panel members, funding officers, and the researchers themselves.

In this seminar, I present insights from my ethnographic study of ten assessment panels and implicated funding officers and researchers in three Swiss IDR/TDR funding schemes. I will outline three main findings resulting from this research: 1) the need to acknowledge and leverage – rather than to reduce – the conceptual and epistemic diversity in assessment panels, 2) the potential of scaffolding IDR/TDR assessment as a relational, social process, and 3) the opportunity of using assessment itself as a resource for all involved actors in the challenging endeavour of making IDR/TDR happen successfully.

Anne-Sophie Schaltegger holds a BA degree in social and cultural anthropology from the University of Zurich, as well as an MSc degree in cognitive and evolutionary anthropology from the University of Oxford. She successfully defended her doctoral thesis in May 2026, for which she ethnographically studied interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research assessment in Swiss funding schemes as a member of the Cultural Studies of Science and Technology group at ETH Zürich. Previously, she worked in organisational development consulting, coaching and supporting teams and organisations in shaping their cultures to allow for agile and collaborative ways of working.

Hussein Zeidan, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

From slogan to practice: Restoring transdisciplinarity as a serious way of working

Transdisciplinarity is increasingly celebrated as a pathway to better science, yet its growing visibility masks persistent conceptual ambiguity and a widening gap between rhetoric and practice. While publications often present it in optimistic terms, the real frustrations surface informally, in the hallway conversations where scholars acknowledge the tensions, contradictions, and institutional pressures shaping their work.

In this contribution, I surface these underlying tensions and question how Pop-Transdisciplinarity have taken hold. I invite us to reconsider what we expect transdisciplinarity to achieve, how it operates in practice, and how it intersects with other approaches to societal and epistemic challenges. I aim to move beyond superficial claims toward a more honest, ethically grounded, and rigorous engagement, one that confronts transdisciplinarity’s blind spots and situates it within broader debates on knowledge, power, and the moral responsibilities of science.

Hussein Zeidan is a trained mechanical and renewable energy engineer with an MA in Science and Technology Studies. He previously worked in the humanitarian and development sector. He is currently a Lecturer and Researcher at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His work examines how transdisciplinarity is translated into educational practice and how it is used to cultivate competencies that support student learning and development.

Register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/97N9DVJdRO2eWvjcqJpPbw