Making transdisciplinarity work

Transdisciplinarity has become widely embraced as a crucial component of inclusive development and innovation. Reflecting on the failures of expert-driven and top-down modernisation, transdisciplinary approaches promise to create more inclusive forms of knowledge production by recognising the expertise of diverse academic and non-academic actors. Based on two case studies of rice farming in Bali and goat keeping in Mozambique, this chapter discusses both the importance of transdisciplinarity and the challenges of making transdisciplinarity work in practice. In contrast with a simple integrationism, it is argued critical transdisciplinarity requires an inclusive epistemology, where actors need to reflect on both the importance and the limitations of knowledge integration through transformative dialogues.