Short abstract:

Transdisciplinary research is increasingly important to academic life and to research policy and funding. Yet, there still are pervasive barriers to adequately support and promote TDR. We enquire how universities alliances can be understood as “in-between” spaces to strengthen TDR.

Long abstract:

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) is increasingly important to academic life and to research policy and funding. Responding to societal challenges demands multi-partner collaborations between experts with diverse disciplinary and societal (practical) backgrounds. Yet, research policy and bi-partisan funding find pervasive barriers to adequately support and promote TDR, as shown in the last report from the European Commission (2023). As a way out, many European universities are organizing permanent alliances where scientific partners develop programs with societal partners, and students are trained in doing TDR (for instance, the Erasmus Plus initiative for New European Universities). In this paper, we enquire how these “in-between” spaces constitute means to strengthen and further develop TDR. After UvA Rector Peter-Paul Verbeek, in-between spaces refer to collaborations between universities and societal actors to address fundamental applied questions, pursuing knowledge and impact. We draw on a qualitative survey among European researchers and interviews with funders, policy makers and practitioners. We complement these with our own extensive experience as leaders and members of universities alliances and TDR projects. Elaborating on the STS literature on boundary organisations and on societal impact, we open a discussion directed towards three main audiences: research policy makers, including funding organisations, researchers and practitioners. We discuss the conceptual implications of collaborating between science and society and some of the practical bottlenecks and conclude by indicating the most urgent issues to strengthen the productive interactions between science and society in intellectual and physical in-between spaces.