Transdisciplinarity within South Africa’s global change research: How (well?) are we doing?

Taufeeq Dhansay,Maarten De Wit,Alon Serper,Sphumelele Ndluvo,Lavinia Perumal,Bastien Linol

doi:10.17159/sajs.2015/a0107

Taufeeq Dhansay, Maarten De Wit + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2015/a0107

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Journal: South African Journal of Science	Publication Date: May 28, 2015
Citations: 2	License type: CC BY 2.5 ZA

Affiliation: Rhodes University

Abstract

The Global Change Programme (GCP) of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) of South Africa is one of the 'Grand Challenge' programmes that comprise a 10-year Innovation Plan (2008-2018), which aims to transform South Africa into a greater knowledge-based economy through stimulating transdisciplinary research to resolve, inter alia, specific energy, economy, society and technology needs. Meeting these challenges epitomises the necessity of effective transdisciplinary research, which can be defined as research specifically orientated to resolve 'real-world' (i.e. encompassing policy-driven research toward societal benefit) problems that are too complex and multidimensional to be answered by singular research disciplines. We present a first-order evaluation of the transdisciplinary capacity building within the GCP programme at its halfway stage, with an aim to test its effectiveness.

Highlights

POSTAL ADDRESS: Africa Earth Observatory Network, Faculty of Science, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth 6031, South Africa
We base our analyses of transdisciplinarity after calculating the level of transdisciplinary research across the various themes presented at the 2nd Biannual Conference for Global Change (CGC), held in early December 2014, at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in the Eastern Cape
We show that an analysis of this nature helps to highlight the need to re-direct some of the key research links to better facilitate the aims of South Africa’s Grand Challenges

Summary

Introduction

POSTAL ADDRESS: Africa Earth Observatory Network, Faculty of Science, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth 6031, South Africa. The Global Change Programme (GCP) of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) of South Africa is one of the ‘Grand Challenge’ programmes that comprise a 10-year Innovation Plan (2008–2018), which aims to transform South Africa into a greater knowledge-based economy through stimulating transdisciplinary research to resolve, inter alia, specific energy, economy, society and technology needs.

Results

Conclusion