Presentation short abstract

We explore interactions between researchers, activists and artists in a participatory action research project about biodiversity transformations. We discuss the role of traditional norms in these interactions and how to resist them to reclaim the transformative potential of transdisciplinarity.

Presentation long abstract

Within academic fields that are concerned with biodiversity loss, there is agreement that urgently needed social and ecological transformations will require the engagement of ‘non-academic’ stakeholders in the production of knowledge. Yet, these transdisciplinary initiatives often reproduce traditional scientific norms and practices, thereby risking their transformative potential. In this article, we offer examples of a participatory action research project that involved transdisciplinary collaborations between researchers, artists, and activists from the grassroots movement Foodpark Amsterdam. The examples are taken from three different ‘contact zones’ where arts, activism, and academia touched each other in different ways: analysing-mobilising, making-analysing, and mobilising-making. In our analysis, we identify how traditional norms and practices manifest in these contact zones and we reflect on our attempts to ‘uncommon’ these norms and practices in order to reclaim the transformative potential of transdisciplinarity. Our findings show how within transdisciplinary collaborations, traditional norms about researchers as the ones that analyse, activists as the ones that mobilise, and artists as the ones that make prevail. We will discuss the limiations of these norms and associated divisions of labor and explore modes of resisting them. We will argue that the transformative potential of transdisciplinary research relies on active strategies of resistance and refusal.