Integration Experts and Expertise

The Working Group explores, develops and promotes academic careers of integration experts across different scientific communities and geographic regions, while strengthening related expertise in integration at the interface between different disciplines as well as between research, policy and practice.

Beginning in mid-2025, the Working Group is organised in three output-oriented projects:

Upcoming events related to each project are described in their project sections. Reports and recordings of past events and publications can be found in the Archive: Events & Publications section.

Goals

The purpose of the Working Group is to further explore, develop, and promote academic careers of integration experts across different scientific communities and geographic regions. It also seeks to strengthen related expertise in integration at the interface between different disciplines (interdisciplinary integration) as well as between science, policy, and practice (transdisciplinary integration) to meet pressing environmental and societal challenges of our time.

The specific goals of the Working Group are to:

  1. Develop a joint vision and specific interventions for transforming academic structures and supporting academic careers of integration experts at both individual and institutional level.
  2. Provide a safe space for peer-to-peer exchange and mutual learning across different scientific communities and geographic regions.
  3. Generate a shared set of resources (e.g., concepts, methods, and tools) for addressing recurring challenges of integration in inter- and transdisciplinary research.
  4. Engage in dialogue with research institutes, universities, and funders to discuss lessons learned and best practices on how to support academic careers of integration experts.

These goals are expected to evolve during the process of establishing, expanding, and consolidating this Working Group. The group is open to anyone interested in exploring, developing, and promoting academic careers of integration experts and strengthening related expertise.

Recognising the Contributions of Integration and Integration Experts (Value Project)

This project focuses on how to assess and articulate the contributions of integration expertise in inter- and transdisciplinary research, education and practice. We envision a future where integration expertise is recognised and valued by our institutions, colleagues, partner organisations, funders, employers, students, and society at large.

Our mission is to make the contributions of integration expertise visible, tangible and accessible to diverse stakeholders. We aim to do this by stimulating the development and adaptation of frameworks and approaches that help assess and articulate such contributions. If successful, the project will have provided new tools that both advance research on inter- and transdisciplinary integration as well as further recognition of the value of integration expertise.

For the academic year 2025/26, we plan to produce a collaborative conceptual piece that defines the problem and identifies potential future pathways for developing relevant frameworks and approaches.

Inaugural Workshop, October 28, 2025

The inaugural workshop of the Recognising the Contributions of Integration and Integration Experts Project (Value Project) of the Integration Experts and Expertise Working Group was open to everyone in the ITD community who is interested in exploring how the contributions of integration and integration experts could be recognised and valued.

Conveners

Giedre Kligyte, TD Electives Program Director & Senior Lecturer, Transdisciplinary School, University of Technology Sydney
Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, Director, Centre for Integrated Research on Culture and Society (CIRCUS), Uppsala University
Helena Grönqvist, Deputy Director & Project Manager, Centre for Integrated Research on Culture and Society (CIRCUS), Uppsala University

Email all co-conveners

Learning, Teaching and Training on Integration (Education Project)

The purpose of this project is to act as a focal point for educators seeking to develop and practice integrative pedagogies. Educators working with inter- and transdisciplinary educational approaches seek to develop integration skills not only in students but also in academics and extra-academic actors, for example, in transdisciplinary challenge-based learning. This project seeks to connect educators by sharing best practice, evaluative methods, evidence and tools to support integration with the goal of documenting and sharing these. This project will actively connect with the Integration Tools Project and the Integration Value Project.

Inaugural Meeting, 9 December 2025

The Learning, Teaching and Training on Integration project of the Integration Experts and Expertise Working Group will hold its first Zoom meeting on 9 December 2025, 13-14 CET/12-13 GMT. We are looking for participants – educators, researchers and all interested ITD Alliance members – who would like to learn from and co-create a toolkit on integration pedagogy.

The meeting will begin with a discussion on Integrative Pedagogy with project co-leads Gemma O’Sullivan and Simon Scott. We will then discuss the three strands of activity for the year ahead:

  • Developing a toolkit on integration pedagogy: drawing from presentations and discussions and shared research, the group will work towards a toolkit that supports educators in designing and teaching integration in inter- and transdisciplinary contexts.
  • Showcasing best practice: colleagues will be invited to present modules/courses or specific teaching practices that help students (and others) learn how to integrate. Presentations will be followed by Q&A and discussion around setup, pedagogy, and challenges.
  • Matchmaking for publication: as themes and questions emerge from group discussions, the group will serve to connect participants interested in co-authoring articles and producing collaborative outputs.

To find out more about avenues for collaboration and participation, you are very welcome to join via the Zoom link. Please also feel free to contact the co-leads Gemma O’Sullivan (g.b.osullivan@uu.nl) and Simon Scott (s.scott@bham.ac.uk) should you have any questions or if you would like to collaborate on this project but cannot attend the first meeting.

Date & Time: 9 December 2025, 13-14 CET/12-13 GMT (convert to your time zone)
Location: Online (Zoom), Open to all
Join via Zoom: https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/84906013967?pwd=ecxAfQhrES1x2MNagUjpY3XHXHnael.1
(Meeting ID: 849 0601 3967; Passcode: 561339)

Conveners

Gemma O’Sullivan (g.b.osullivan@uu.nl)
Simon Scott (s.scott@bham.ac.uk)

Integration Tools Project

The purpose of this project is to identify the integration-specific tools that integration experts should know about. By “integration-specific” we mean tools that accomplish an integrative process rather than those that prepare for integration (e.g., by surfacing inputs) or that follow integration (e.g., disseminating integrated outputs). The project is co-sponsored with the Toolkits & Methods Working Group. See the dedicated Integration Tools Project for details and to contact the Core group.

Archive: Events & Publications

Events

ITD Value Project Inaugural Workshop 2025, Online, 28 October 2025
On 28 October 2025, 18 participants from across Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia joined an online workshop to kick off the ITD Value Project, a project of the Integration Experts and Expertise working group of the ITD Alliance. Facilitated by Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, Giedre Kligyte, and Helena Grönqvist, the session focused on a big question: how do we make integration expertise visible and valued? The group explored challenges like the lack of understanding of integration work, missing career paths, and resourcing gaps, and brainstormed opportunities, from creating clearer integrator role profiles to different modes of dialogue and advocacy. Next steps include drafting a roadmap, and progressing a range of ‘quick wins’, such as mapping the demand for integration, and developing integrator personas and case study examples. Sub-groups will take these ideas forward into 2026.

Pilot Workshop «Towards a Theory of Change on Integration Experts and Expertise», February 2023
What can be done to recognise integration experts and expertise and to support the careers of such experts? A pilot workshop organized within the ITD Alliance Working Group on Integration Experts and Expertise held in Aeschiried, a mountain village in Switzerland, in February 2023 addressed this question. The results of that pilot workshop are available at: Towards a theory of change to institutionalise integration experts and expertise by The Aeschiried Integrators https://i2insights.org/2023/06/06/institutionalising-integration-expertise/

Publications

Hoffmann S, Deutsch L, Klein JT, O’Rourke M (2022) Integrate the integrators! A call for establishing academic careers for integration experts. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 9. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01138-z

Hoffmann S, Deutsch L, O’Rourke M (2024) Integration experts and expertise. In: Darbellay F (ed) Elgar Encyclopedia of Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity. Elgaronline, eBook, pp 273-276

Former Core Team Members

  • Sabine Hoffmann, Inter- and Transdisciplinary (ITD) Research Group, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), Switzerland
  • Christian Pohl, Transdisciplinary Lab of the Department of Environmental Systems Science (USYS TdLab) at ETH Zurich, Switzerland
  • Bianca Vienni Baptista, Transdisciplinary Lab of the Department of Environmental Systems Science (USYS TdLab) at ETH Zurich, Switzerland
  • Michael O’Rourke, Toolbox Dialogue Initiative Center at MSU Center for Interdisciplinarity, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA
  • Gabriele Bammer, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
  • Christine Ogilvie Hendren, Appalachian State University, USA
  • Sebastian Rogga, Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Germany
  • Alexandra Lux, Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE), Germany

Contact

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