[ISEA2017] Panel: Roger Malina, G. Mauricio Mejía & Andrés F. Roldán — Towards an Inventory of Best Practices for Transdisciplinary Collaboration

Panel Statement

Panel: Training Methods for Transdisciplinary Collaboration

Keywords: Best Practices, Transdisciplinary Collaboration, Art and Science

Transdisciplinary, as opposed to inter or multidisciplinary, practices are increasing in many areas in industry, government, academia and civil society. The benefits of such practices have been proven in areas such as health, engineering, or business. However, in wide collaborations, collaboration bridges diverse fields such as art and design, humanities, science, technology, and medicine; these pose specific challenges. Institutional contexts bridge those of self-employed practitioners, to profit and nonprofit sectors both in civil society and government; training practices are less clear and specific difficulties can be anticipated. In this paper, we review some best practices and didactics for teamwork collecting relevant sources from different fields. Our conclusion is that it is possible, and necessary, to train individuals and teams for transdisciplinary collaboration practices. Depending on the field of application some approaches are shared, but also different approaches will be required. The authors recommend new research and development adapted to particular transdisciplinary fields such as STEM to STEAM.

  • G. Mauricio Mejía is an associate professor at the Department of Design, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, at the University of Caldas, Colombia. He is currently the program director of the PhD in Design and Creation. He received his PhD in Design from the University of Minnesota. His research work focuses on interaction design, behavior change, codesign, and strategic design.
  • Roger Malina is Chair of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at
    MIT Press. Trained as a space astronomer, he currently runs the ArtSciLab which carries out art-science research and experimental publishing.
  • Andrés Roldán is a researcher at Strategic Design Lab, Department of Design, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, at the University of Caldas, Colombia. He is currently
    Student of the PhD in Design and Creation. His research work focuses on co-design, design to behavior change, and aesthetics.

Full text (PDF) p. 681-687