ITD24 Conference Report

ITD24 conference report – Looking back on ITD24: Inter- and Transdisciplinarity Beyond Buzzwords.
Report by Timothy Bland and Tobias Buser, 25 November 2024

From 4 to 8 November, the ITD24 conference, ‘Inter- and Transdisciplinarity Beyond Buzzwords – Educational Pathways for Sustainable Research Collaborations,’ took place at the Railway Museum in Utrecht, the Netherlands. This unique meeting was organised by the ITD-Alliance, Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, and Utrecht University. 500 experts, teachers and researchers from all over the world, came together to take inter- and transdisciplinary education and research to the next level.

Spread over the week, more than 330 presentations, workshops and training sessions took place, and many posters and videos were on display. The conference was opened on Monday by Utrecht University (UU) vice-rectors Manon Kluijtmans and Ted Sanders. In their contributions, they emphasised the crucial relationship between education and research and the core value of ‘openness’ within UU. These values form the basis for the pursuit of sustainable collaborations in education and science. The first day also ended festively and musically led by band Ghost Science.

New phase for trans- and interdisciplinarity

The conference marked a new phase for the international inter- and transdisciplinary community, which has continued to grow in recent years both qualitatively in expertise and quantitatively in the number of people involved. With renewed language and tools, researchers and teachers can work more effectively. The next challenge is to work together more intensively, literally and figuratively across borders.

While early ITD conferences focused on ‘why transdisciplinary research’ and ‘how to design td projects’, we now saw much broader, system-wide approaches to advancing and supporting inter- and transdisciplinary research and education. Presentations and workshops ranged from issues of epistemic justice, to career paths, to new roles such as integration experts, to the design of projects and funding programmes, to university and administrative structures that bridge and connect across departments. In general, we have seen an increase in spaces for experimentation and learning across structural boundaries, including an impressive range of collaborative methods. 

To cultivate the competencies and structures for transdisciplinary approaches, capacity development that engages with different actors and contexts is key, with very encouraging examples presented and discussed in Utrecht, such as challenge-based courses at bachelor level for all students across faculties, training and reflection for project leaders, researchers and research partners, training and peer learning for those involved in teaching, as well as for programme managers, evaluators and board members in research funding agencies.

These are clearly exciting times for inter- and transdisciplinarity, and the motivation, enthusiasm and impressive collective knowledge and expertise shone throughout the conference.

Editor Note: This report was published in the 25 November 2024 ITD Alliance News Bulletin. Selected participant perspectives are presented below.

Conference Photos

ITD24 Participant Perspectives

Below you will find selected feedback we received from participants, originally published in the ITD Alliance News Bulletin on 18 and 25 November 2024.

View posts and photos from participants using the hashtag #itd24 on LinkedIn to get a sense of the conference (or to re-live your experience and continue your connections)!

Doriam Camacho Rodríguez, Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia Campus Santa Marta, Colombia

Gracias a #ITD24 por permitirnos ampliar nuestros conocimientos sobre investigación transdisciplinaria. Fue muy enriquecedor conversar con investigadores de diferentes países y disciplinas. El lugar del evento fue inspirador para generar diálogo en torno a la evolución de la ciencia y la tecnología. Espero poder acompañarlos en un próximo evento y poder contarles los avances en investigación transdisciplinaria en Colombia y América Latina.

Thanks to #ITD24 for allowing us to expand our knowledge of transdisciplinary research. It was very enriching to talk with researchers from different countries and disciplines. The event location was inspiring to generate dialogue around the evolution of science and technology. I hope to be able to accompany you at an upcoming event and to be able to tell you about the advances in transdisciplinary research in Colombia and Latin America.

Giedre Kligyte, University of Technology Sydney, Australia

It was incredible to finally meet and talk with scholars whose work I’ve been following from afar or only interacted with on Zoom. Travelling such a long distance for a conference makes you reflect on its worth—especially considering the carbon footprint involved.

What stood out was how genuinely open and engaging the ITD community was. The focus on sharing diverse perspectives and evolving ideas together felt authentic—something not all conferences achieve. The networking opportunities, planned and incidental, were a major highlight, and the countless inspiring sessions and workshops I attended throughout the week are too many to mention!

A key takeaway for me was the maturity of discussions around ID/TD approaches. The focus wasn’t on justifying why these methods matter but on evaluating the quality of integration and the knowledge produced through them. I appreciated the conceptual depth this conference offered, staying true to the theme “beyond buzzwords.”

That said, I noticed a level of fragmentation in the field. Many people are working on incredible TD initiatives but seem unaware of related efforts happening in adjacent areas. It’s not surprising, given how diverse and dispersed this field is, spanning multiple disciplines, journals, and parts of the university. But it does highlight the need for better connections across this vibrant ecosystem, highlighting the importance of maintaining the crucial knowledge infrastructure—mapping, and sense-making work—even more!

Dr. Guadalupe Peres- Cajias, Universidad Católica Boliviana, Bolivia

Thank you ITD24 for this wonderful week of learning. Thank you for letting me share my work with you. It was an honour to come from Bolivia to be part of the ITD Global Conference. I am proud to be part of the ITD Community. Let’s continue to strengthen our transdisciplinary path. Let’s continue to open trails to innovative proposals for development. Let’s keep the collaborative work that add so much. My special thanks to the Crea Project and the Universidad Católica Boliviana from Bolivia that allowed me to be here with the support of the VLIR UOS from Belgium.

Kirsi Cheas, FINTERDIS, Finland

The conference was really amazing in many ways, and the networking event itself was so wonderful! I was very pleased that the conference had participants from so many different countries and regions, and the dialogue mostly seemed very open and respectful. But I also encountered some situations which reinforced geopolitical hierarchies. Kudos to South African scholar, Dr. Stephanie Briers, who spoke up about the fact that Africa is a
heterogeneous continent with lots of diverse and valuable knowledge of its own, and experts from the North should be more considerate of this when discussing “coproduction” of knowledge with African partners. Moreover, observations by Asian scholars about their regions resembled my research findings concerning Central America: there is a lot of creative collaboration and integration of ideas across fields and professions that occurs organically, but they don’t necessarily call it inter- or transdisciplinarity. When the conference organizers referred to “our community,” these
observations made me wonder: who exactly is included in the “we”?


President’s note (Gabriele Bammer): Many thanks for these reflections and for the many e-mails plus comments on social media. For those of us who were not there, these have helped bring the conference to life. Kirsi’s reflection raises two important questions for the ITD (and related boundary spanning) community about who ‘we’ are and how we support each other’s learning. I hope such questions will lead to an ongoing discussion, maybe in one of the existing or proposed new working groups! I want to comment briefly on the issue of supporting each other’s learning. Given that none of us and no team can ever know or do everything that’s necessary when dealing with a complex societal or environmental problem, we are always operating in a state of imperfection. For me that means constantly learning about other, often more fit-for-purpose, ways of doing things. And that’s the joy of researching complex problems. It’s also about teaching and sharing what we know with those who might benefit from it, and doing so in a way that is kind and supportive. Such teaching is, I think, even harder than on-going learning. As a step in supporting each other’s learning and teaching, the news bulletin is trialling a new addition “Consult the Community,” where you can post requests for help and share what you know. [See initial Consult the Community questions and responses in the 18 and 25 November 2024 issues of the ITD Alliance News Bulletin.]