Source: Annika Weiser, 2023
Background:
Annika Weiser joined the tdAcademy team in the 2nd project phase. Since April 2023, she has been a research associate at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) in the research group "Designing Real-World Laboratory Research". She studied Business and Environmental Law (LL.B.) at Trier University of Applied Sciences and Sustainability Science (M.Sc.) at Leuphana University Lüneburg, where she was involved in various transdisciplinary projects during her studies and afterwards. Her doctoral project focused on strategic approaches for a more sustainable use of (critical) metals. In recent years, her work at Leuphana focused on higher education for sustainability and the integration of transdisciplinary research with teaching.
What do you find interesting about transdisciplinary research?
"I sort of stumbled into transdisciplinary research during my Master's degree - and stuck with it. I am fascinated by the joint learning and communication process that is made possible through a transdisciplinary approach, and I am firmly convinced that it is the right way to bring together all the relevant knowledge that is needed to solve these major challenges.'
What is your role in the tdAcademy project and what do you find exciting about it?
"Together with the Öko-Institut, we are working at the interface of thematic lines 3 and 4: How can a context-sensitive selection and adaptation of transdisciplinary formats look like? What I find exciting about this work and the tdAcademy as a whole is that it enables us to work on different levels: the precise analysis and synthesis of the content is just as much a part of our tasks as making these results usable for the community in terms of concrete tools or the development of suitable capacity-building formats. Plus, it’s of course great fun to be in exchange with the team members from the four institutions involved in the project.'