The Charles University Environment Center (CUEC) extends a very warm thank you to everybody who participated in the Transdisciplinary Research for Sustainability (TDRS) conference held in Prague on 23 & 24 May 2013, and helped make it such a success, especially those who contributed key note presentations and posters. CUEC and the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems are now working together on the conference follow-up and hope to make the key conference outcome - a list of transdisciplinary research policy recommendations for the European Commission's DG Research - available very soon.

Slides, posters and podcasts are linked here from presentations given at the conference. The actual final programme amended on conference day can be downloaded here.
This one and a half day workshop invited approximately 50 experts from across the EU area who are working in TDRS. The event was aimed at professionals from European Research Area (ERA) organisations and policy areas, and for those running (or have run) transdisciplinary research projects on sustainability.

Context:

Major EU research programmes are calling for transdisciplinary research to address ‘wicked’ joined up and complex problems – particularly in the area of sustainability. Whilst there is an emphasis on the dissemination of substantive results from funded projects, there is less attention paid to the sharing of the experiences and lessons learnt from the project processes, problems and issues, and strategies developed for dealing with these. This gathering provided an opportunity to share and reflect on issues of TDRS, including methodology and management, together with an opportunity to contribute to recommendations to the ERA for the further development of research capacity on TDRS. 

Aims:

To help to inform the EU’s research agendas and meta-agendas about evaluation, conduct and processes of TDRS with information, perspectives and analyses from practitioners. To explore the Convergence and MOSUR approaches, tools and concepts might inform and link with agendas in TDRS. To discuss and develop recommendations to the ERA to help enable better and more productive TDRS.

This event was hosted by the Charles University Environment Center and the CONVERGE EU FP7 research project, coordinated by the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems.

• Conference proceedings:

• Apart from the inevitable technical hitch at the very beginning and the discovery that buildings erected several centuries ago are not necessarily conducive to easy access to the physically impaired, the conference went very smoothly. All the presentations and posters prepared for the conference in advance are found below, but the outcomes of the various workshops and discussion are still in the process of being summarised and drawn up for easy consumption. Nevertheless, a podcast of questions resulting from Session 1 on the first day of the conference can be found below. The results of the afternoon's work on networks which will look at where the current synergies and overlaps lie in regard to transdisciplinary research for sustainability for the potential future creation of a dedicated TDRS network will be published on this page shortly. The same applies to the Friday workshop on enumerating the research policy recommendations that arose out of the conference discussions. Finally, a very interesting panel discussion on the subject of academic freedom, and 'corruption' or rather ethics in research and education provided the basis for the future development of research questions into this area which the conference organisers plan to follow up on.

Main presentations and podcasts:

• Lino Paula, DG Research:  'Science in Society', European Commission: 'Transdisciplinarity, Responsibility and Horizon 2020' - Presentation - Podcast
• Dr Maik Adomssent, Leuphana University and COPERNICUS ALLIANCE: Overview of issues in TDRS from the researcher perspective - Presentation - Podcast
• Dr. Jan Frouz, Charles University: Managing Transdisciplinary Consortia. Presentation - Podcast
• Ian Roderick, CONVERGE Coordinator: What is a Global Wicked Problem? Presentation - Podcast
• Dr Jenneth Parker: Degrees of Interdisciplinarity and the Difference They Make: Issues of TDRS in the CONVERGE project Presentation - Podcast
• Sándor Fülöp, former Hungarian Commissioner for Future Generations: Future Generations as Key Research Stakeholders in all TDRS calls Presentation - Podcast
• Podcast - Questions from day 1

• Posters:

• Transdisciplinary research in post communist European States - Andrew Barton
• Interdisciplinary teaching/learning – pre-requisites, processes and outcomes - Jana Dlouhá 
• Relationships between Systems Modelling and Scenario development in TDRS - Michael Clinton
• Transdisciplinary participatory action research project brings voices of poor into policy discussions - Deborah Rogers 
• Equity and Sustainability: converging policy communities - Balint Balázs
• SOL Save our Lives - transdisciplinary partnership in sustainable development in road safety in Central Europe (presentation only) - Jaroslav Heinrich
• Sustainable Reform of Higher Education in Bosnia Herzegovina - Genc Trnavci
• SCAD a model for sustainable future development - Charles Amirthan
• TDRS from the point of view of an early career researcher (plus presentation) - Dana Kapitulčinová
• Economic crisis impact on the EU: Convergence process from the perspective of Green Economy achievements - Genovaitė Liobikienė
• Sustainable Researching - Alice-Marie Archer
• The Convergence Mapping System (plus presentation) - Edina Vadovics 
• CONVERGE posters - Convergence Initiatives Map - Climate Ticket - Gödöllo Climate Club - Future Generations Ombudsman - SCAD Kitchen Gardens & Fruit Tree Afforestation - The Converging World

Conference photos:

84 images

If you are interested in any of the information contained on this page, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. at the Charles University Environment Center.