TORCH D7.2 - Balancing Excellence Driven Research and Transdisciplinary Research and Public Engagement

The objective of this report is to present the results from the TORCH project WP7 research on public engagement and transdisciplinary science (research and education). This report is the follow-up from the D7.1 report, which has presented the collection of experiences and good practices on incentives and disincentives for public engagement and transdisciplinary science. In this report (D7.2), we present the findings from the operationalization of Task 7.2: Reflections and recommendations for future transdisciplinary research and innovation to balance excellence-driven and global challenge-driven science. The main results contain broader analyses and recommendations for transdisciplinary research and innovation to balance excellence-driven and global challenge-driven science.

The result of our research shows that systematic empirical studies of how public engagement and transdisciplinary science have been perceived and manifested in different universities are valuable but also still lacking to some extent. We found that public engagement, transdisciplinary science, and democratization of science have different meanings for different universities. Therefore, understanding the concepts used and underlying contexts that relate to socio-cultural and political systems surrounding science and university systems, is crucial for the university to come up with a joint focus and goals in developing their public engagement and transdisciplinary science vision. Furthermore, it is also clear from our findings that public engagement and transdisciplinary science are much connected to the overall vision of furthering open science, as it helps to position science in the larger role to connect science with society and embrace the universities' role in actively addressing sustainability problems. To move forward with the open science agenda, the improvement of a rewards and recognition system for public engagement and transdisciplinary science is pivotal, as the system could provide incentives to individual/team level and trigger more actors to start doing public engagement and transdisciplinary science. Furthermore, increasing capacity has also proven to be important, as often, both scientists and societal stakeholders have limited time, funding, and skills to engage the public/conduct a transdisciplinary approach.