Abstract
Working towards sustainable solutions requires involving professionals and stakeholders from all sectors of society into research and teaching. This often presents a challenge to scholars at universities, as they lack capacity and time needed for negotiating different agendas, languages, competencies, and cultures among faculty, students, and stakeholders. Management approaches and quality criteria have been developed to cope with this challenge, including concepts of boundary organizations, transdisciplinary research, transition management, and interface management. However, few of these concepts present comprehensive proposals how to facilitate research with stakeholder participation while creating educational opportunities along the lifecycle of a project. The article focuses on the position of a transacademic interface manager (TIM) supporting participatory sustainability research and education efforts. We conceptualize the task portfolio of a TIM; outline the capacities a TIM needs to possess in order to successfully operate; and propose an educational approach for how to train students in becoming a TIM. For this, we review the existing literature on TIMs and present insights from empirical sustainability research and educational projects that involved TIMs in different functions. The article provides practical guidance to universities on how to organize these critical endeavors more effectively and to offer students an additional career perspective.
Highlights
Transformational sustainability science develops evidence-supported solutions to sustainability challenges and trains students in this capacity [1]
We focus on the role of transacademic interface manager (TIM) in such transacademic sustainability research and education projects, with special attention to the requirements that stem from the educational settings
We focus in this article on transacademic interface management in sustainability research and education [1,2,5], we draw from a broader variety of literature to inform the concept of the TIM
Summary
Transformational sustainability science develops evidence-supported solutions to sustainability challenges and trains students in this capacity [1]. Transformational sustainability science has been developed in distinction from descriptive-analytical modes of sustainability science that primarily aim at enhancing the understanding of complex human-environment systems [2] While this might be useful, it is insufficient for providing actionable knowledge to guide societal transformations towards sustainability. Research and teaching in transformational sustainability science involves professionals and stakeholders in different functions in order to integrate practical/local knowledge and create buy-in for the implementation of solution options [4,5] While this is widely considered ―best practice‖, it often presents a challenge to scholars at universities, as they lack capacity and time needed for negotiating different agendas, languages, competencies, and cultures among faculty, students, and stakeholders [6,7]
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