59: Institutionalising

Overview & Synopsis

Increased interest in interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity has heightened calls for institutionalising structures and strategies that cross boundaries of expertise both within and beyond the academy. A multitude of strategies and models of change emerged along different subthemes: spanning different historical and geographical contexts, temporal and spatial organization of research and teaching, degrees of change from modifications to transformations, theories or philosophies of institutional change, and factors helping or hindering institutionalising processes and dynamics. Given the heterogeneity of practices, we should not impose a universal definition of the term “institutionalisation”. Institutionalising is here conceptualised as a verb. Therefore, embedding inter- and transdisciplinarity in organisational structures is best thought of as a process, which does not follow a predetermined formula However, the strategies and models of institutionalising can be designed, implemented, reframed and/or analysed along four practical dimensions and questions: epistemic, cultural, organisational and strategic. This framework is useful for tackling continuing and future challenges posed by different relations at the intersections of cultures, institutions, and communities in institutionalising inter- and transdisciplinarity.