At the beginning of spring, we are not only looking forward to more sunshine and birdsong, but also to exciting and promising fellow groups visiting the partner institutes of the tdAcademy in the coming weeks and months. During their stay, the fellows, who are funded by the Robert Bosch Stiftung, will conduct research on a variety of topics relevant to transdisciplinary research.

This 'Fellow Spring' kicked off with an international fellow group exploring how relationships can be built and shaped for context-sensitive transdisciplinary research as part of ‚Topic line 3: Contextual Dependencies'. For one week, the researchers David Manuel-Navarrette (School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, USA), Zainal Abidin Bin Sanusi (International Islamic University, Malaysia) and Bagele Chilisa (Faculty of Education, University of Botswana, Botswana) were guests at Leuphana University Lüneburg. From the enriching and multifaceted exchange, the fellow group developed a learning module to strengthen ‚Relational Thinking‘ in transdisciplinary research projects. Five reflexive principles should support researchers in developing a sensitivity for different ways of relating in transdisciplinary research contexts.

In the coming days, a detailed report on the content of the learning module will be published in the Updates of ‚Topic Line 3: Contextual Interdependencies.