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Short abstract:

In this study we aim to understand impact creation in TDR, through the emergence of impact practices in a project. We theorize impact practices in the context of TDR and empirically follow the emergence of impact practices and their potential for facilitating integration processes in TDR.

Long abstract:

Transdisciplinary research projects (TDR) are increasingly expected to create societal impact, particularly through the integration of different bodies of knowledge (Hessels et al., 2009; Hoffmann et al., 2019). Recently, the notion of impact practices has been introduced to better understand how impact is created in research projects (De Jong & Balaban, 2022). Nevertheless, understanding how impact practices emerge and facilitate integration processes in TDR is lacking. In this study we further theorize impact practices in the context of TDR.

Our contribution is twofold. First, we contribute to conceptualizing impact practices building upon a constructivist notion of impact, in which we understand that scientific and societal impact are actively constructed by knowledge producers and evaluators in highly related networks (Smit & Hessels, 2021). Thus, researchers continuously create scientific or societal impact through highly related practices (Brenninkmeijer, 2022). Second, we adopt a process ontology to study the emergence of impact practices in a longitudinal study.

Empirically, we followed the emergence of impact practices over two years in a large-scale TDR, and studied how these practices facilitate integration processes. We show that impact practices can facilitate or obstruct integration processes, and hence are important to understand in TDR projects. Furthermore, we observed that the emergence of impact practices is driven by values of knowledge producers and evaluators (what impact is important), through which strategies (what should be done), and with whom (which interactions), are pursued (Brenninkmeijer, 2022). We observe that knowledge producers strive for different impact practices grounded in different scientific disciplines.