Transdisciplinary Experiments

Research, teaching and institutionalisation

Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (Editor), Wendy Sims-Schouten (Editor), Jack Tsao (Editor)

Transdisciplinary Experiments: Research, teaching and institutionalisation explores how experimental approaches can reshape research, education, and institutions in higher education to better respond to today’s complex and interconnected challenges. The book is grounded in the idea of ‘the experiment’ as a way to open up new possibilities, whether in knowledge-creation, teaching and learning, or institutional structures and initiatives. It examines how these experiments can inspire meaningful change across disciplines, sectors and cultures.

International contributors – scholars, artists, scientists, teachers, curators, community and academic leaders – offer diverse perspectives blending practical strategies with theoretical insights. These contributions advance the framing of transdisciplinarity and its implications for practice. Engaging with project-based teaching, flexible course and programme designs, and new forms of institutional organisation, the book converges on a common goal of rethinking how we create and share knowledge in ways that are more collaborative, adaptive and aligned with the needs of a rapidly changing world. A section titled Provocations offers further reflections from four contributors on leadership challenges, failures and possibilities for creative interventions.

By connecting curiosity with action and experimentation with institutionalisation, Transdisciplinary Experiments offers a vision of what higher education research, teaching, learning and leadership can look like when driven by creativity, openness, and a commitment to building more resilient futures.

List of figures
List of contributors
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgements

1 Introduction: Transdisciplinary experiments for a more flourishing future
Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, Wendy Sims-Schouten and Jack Tsao

2 Provocation 1 – Tolerating Discomfort: the creative unease of transdisciplinary experiments
Ken Arnold

Part I: Transdisciplinary research

3 Transdisciplinary research: doctoral, postdoctoral and professorial voices
Wendy Sims-Schouten, Bart de Nil, Helen Omand and Sarah Ferner

4 Transdisciplinary architectures: children, space and climate change
Francesca Salvi, Nicola Crowson and Guido Robazza

5 Exploring art and the earth: RELOAD communities, transdisciplinarity and empowering youth
Rick Dolphijn and Irena Chawrilska

6 Visioning transdisciplinary public health
Ranjita Dhital

7 Provocation 2 – To see what everyone sees but think what no one has thought
Rana Basem Dajani

Part II: Transdisciplinary teaching and learning

8 Artificial intelligence and transdisciplinary playgrounds
Jack Tsao

9 Becoming a nomadic artisan: cosmos, streets and transdisciplinarity
Mark Ingham

10 Facilitating a transdisciplinary spirit: a matter of knowns and yet-to-be-knowns
Kate Maguire and Agi Ryder

11 Provocation 3 – Travelling with theory: experiments in gender and childhood sexualities in the Global South
Deevia Bhana

Part III: Institutionalising transdisciplinarity

12 Institutionalising a transdisciplinary science curriculum
David J. Helfand

13 Transdisciplinary emergence: public universities seeking to provide common good
Paul Gibbs

14 Supporting transdisciplinary humanities and arts research at the Trinity Long Room Hub
Caitriona Curtis, Maureen Burgess, Giovanna Lima and Doireann Wallace

15 Two concepts of transdisciplinarity: glimpsing a trans-experientiality in higher education
Ronald Barnett and Karen Gravett

16 Provocation 4 – Place, pace and scale: experimenting with transdisciplinarity within a university
Louise McWhinnie

17 Coda: transdisciplinary experiments in motion
Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, Wendy Sims-Schouten, and Jack Tsao

DOI: 10.14324/111.9781806550616

Number of illustrations: 9

Publication date: 01 May 2026

EPUB ISBN: 9781806550623

Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (Editor)

Gray Kochhar-Lindgren is Honorary Professor of the Humanities at the University of Hong, where from 2014 to 2022 he served as Professor and Director of the Common Core. In 2025 he was appointed Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama: Huntsville for one year. He is the author, most recently, of Urban Arabesques and Pintxos: Small Delicacies and Chance Encounters and co-directs Wild Studios Consulting and Creative Productions LLC.

Wendy Sims-Schouten (Editor)

Wendy Sims-Schouten is Head of the Arts and Sciences Department at UCL, Professor in Interdisciplinary Psychology and Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on historic and contemporary practices and narratives around wellbeing and resilience of marginalised groups, including child migrants, young care leavers and families from ethnic minority communities. Her work centralises voices and coproduction. Wendy is Chair of the Editorial Board for the international and interdisciplinary journal Children and Society.

Jack Tsao (Editor)

Jack Tsao is Associate Director and Senior Lecturer of the Common Core at the University of Hong Kong. As a Senior Fellow of Advance HE, he is interested in the creative leadership and administration of higher education, and the continuing professional development of teaching staff. His research on Education Futures in the university and pre-tertiary context focuses on transdisciplinary learning, innovative curriculum and pedagogies, international and comparative education, youth aspirations, and digital technologies and artificial intelligence.