Fellowship

The Guest and Fellowship Pogramme funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung enables an active involvement of relevant actors of transdisciplinary research in the tdAcademy. Researchers, also targeting specifically Early Career Researchers from the global south and global north, have the opportunity to widen their network, exchange their research experiences, discuss the latest developments of transdisciplinary research, and present their own research to the global community. Guests and fellows can work individually or collaboratively on specific topics, write publications or position papers and develop innovative approaches and ideas.

Application Information

You can apply to the tdAcademy as a guest or as part of a fellow group (three persons each). Please send an abstract of your work project (500 - 1000 words) to the tdAcademy office. In your application, please also indicate an approximate period of time in which you could realize the guest or fellow stay. Guests can be invited for a maximum of two months, fellow groups for a maximum of three months or four times for a week. The exact terms of the fellowship will depend on the specific format. The project's steering group will timely discuss and respond to you as to whether you will be invited as a guest or fellow, and if so, with what support options.

If you have any questions about the fellowship and the application process, please contact our office.

Fellows of the tdAcademy

Sabine Hoffmann

is a guest at ZTG in May 2022, exploring societal change processes towards sustainability.

"As a fellow at ZTG, I am happy to support the tdAcademy, bringing in my experiences and insights from developing ‘Theories of Change’ and integrating them at conceptual and empirical level."

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Rachel Claus

is doing research on methods for measuring research contributions to change processes. She is part of a tdAcademy fellow group together with Janet Harris, coordinated by ZTG.

“I am happy to support the Td-Academy by bringing experience from theory-based research outcome evaluation to improve methods for assessing transdisciplinary research.”

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Janet Harris

conducts research exploring how involvement across different stakeholder groups contributes to the process and outcomes of research. She is part of a tdAcademy fellow group together with Rachel Claus and coordinated by ZTG.

"As a fellow group member, I am looking forward to working with the tdAcademy to explore approaches to monitoring research impact."

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Dena Fam

is a guest at ZTG from October to December 2021, advancing her research on transformation of universities towards dynamic and relational inter- and transdisciplinary institutions.

„As a fellow group of the tdAcademy, we aim at digging deeper into Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to explore its potential in grasping dynamics and relationalities in transformations of universities towards inter- and transdisciplinarity.“

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Livia Fritz

is a guest at ZTG and Leuphana University from October to December 2021, exploring hegemonies in university transformations towards transdisciplinarity.

„As a fellow group of the tdAcademy, we aim at digging deeper into Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to explore its potential in grasping dynamics and relationalities in transformations of universities towards inter- and transdisciplinarity.“

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Ulli Vilsmaier

is a guest at ZTG from October to December 2021, researching into Gramsci’s concept of hegemonies in relation to transdisciplinarity.

„As a fellow group of the tdAcademy, we aim at digging deeper into Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to explore its potential in grasping dynamics and relationalities in transformations of universities towards inter- and transdisciplinarity.“

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Juliana Merçon

is affilated with the tdAcademy fellow group of Livia Fritz, Dena Fam and Ulli Vilsmaier to support their conceptual explorations from a Latin American research praxis.

„As a fellow group of the tdAcademy, we aim at digging deeper into Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to explore its potential in grasping dynamics and relationalities in transformations of universities towards inter- and transdisciplinarity.“

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Peter Wehling

is a guest at ISOE from May to June 2021, where he is doing research on institutional resistances to transdisciplinarity.

"As a guest at ISOE, I would like to support the tdAcademy by critically examining both common biases and institutional structures in science which prevent transdisciplinarity from having a stronger scientific impact."

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Gemma Tejedor Papell

is a guest at ZTG in July and September 2021, researching on transdisciplinary engineering education for sustainability.

"I’d like to support the tdAcademy by deepening into both transdisciplinary education for sustainability in engineering, and methods for monitoring the research (societal) effects in the field. A Summer School prototype on Transdisciplinarity and Sustainability in Education, focused on Technical Universities, will be advanced."

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Regina Rhodius

is a fellow at Oeko-Institut e.V., contributing her Real-World-Lab expertise to research on innovative formats in the td context.

"As fellow of both tdAcademy und Oeko-Institut, I am looking forward to a joint reflection on the fast-developing landscape of new formats."

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Sarah Burch

is working with the tdAcademy to explore the effect of socio-cultural and economic context on transdisciplinary research.

“As a tdAcademy fellow, I am very happy to support this community as we explore the dynamic relationships between transdisciplinary sustainability research and the governance of sustainability transitions in local spaces, including experimentation in the small business sector.”

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Fellow Groups

Fellow Group Context

The fellow group consisting of David Manuel-Navarrette (School of Sustainability, Arizona State University), Sarah Burch (University of Waterloo), Zainal Abidin Bin Sanusi (International Islamic University, Malaysia),  Bagele Chilisa (Faculty of Education, University of Botswana) and Haila Lotz-Sisitka (Rhodes University, Department of Education, Environmental Learning Research Centre) will work on context dependencies of transdisciplinary research. They will pursue a self-reflective and explorative approach through which they will collaboratively study the value and dynamics of relations in transdisciplinary research. A central component of these considerations will also be the reflection on one's own experiences with relationships as a researcher, whereby, in addition to the personal level, a historical perspective on the production and recognition of knowledge(s) in relations is important to the fellows.

The fellow group had their online kick-off meeting November 2022. The cooperation takes place in the form of regular online formats and one joint meeting February 2023 at Leuphana University Lüneburg. In this week, the fellows will work intensely on a joint product and get to know Leuphana University accompanied by colleagues of the topic line context dependencies.

Fellow Group Institutions

The fellow group consisting of Dena Fam (UTS, Australia), Livia Fritz (EPFL, Switzerland), Ulli Vilsmaier (Responsive Research, Switzerland) with Juliana Mercon (University of Veracruz, Mexico) as associated member focuses on the transformation of universities towards dynamic and relational inter- and transdisciplinary institutions through the lens of Antiono Gramsci's concept of hegemony. The groups objectives are: to understand how universities develop and implement strategies, integrated practices, and organizational models that enable inter- and transdisciplinary research and teaching as well as to develop a perspective that accounts for the broader societal, i.e. political-historical, economic and socio-cultural context conditions that enable or hinder such transformations. The intensive working phase of the fellow group is between October and December 2021. This publication was produced as part of the Fellowship: The Responsive and Constitutive Character of Transdisciplinarity: Consequences for Higher Education (Fam, Dena, & Vilsmaier, Ulli (2022). The Responsive and Constitutive Character of Transdiciplinarity: Consequences for Higher Education, Journal of educational studies,21(2), 30–50.) Learn more

Fellow Group Societal Impact

The fellow group consisting of Rachel Claus (Royal Roads University, Canada), Janet Harris (University of Sheffield, UK) as well as Josefa Kny and Martina Schäfer (both ZTG, TU Berlin) from the tdAcademy team deals with approaches and methods of impact assessment and evaluation in transdisciplinary or participatory research in the three fields of research for development, sustainability and (public) health. The group has been working together continuously and decentrally since summer 2021. Learn more