‘The transdisciplinary character of this project makes it less suitable for existing financing schemes’

Transdisciplinary research is a way of doing research in which researchers are working alongside stakeholders to tackle a societal issue. This mode of research is not without its challenges. We at Utrecht University want to learn from each other by sharing stories from those actively engaging in transdisciplinary research and how they went about their journeys. In this field story, we share the experiences of Sanne Akerboom and Michelle Prins (Natuur&Milieu) about the transdisciplinary research collaborative called the Sustainable Industry Lab. “We think that if you give this process time, if you work on it together, you can reach very important milestones, but you cannot define them in advance”, says Sanne Akerboom, assistant professor Law and Politics of the Energy Transition.