Hegemony in institutional transformation. Thesis from a work in progress"

Transforming universities towards transdisciplinarity is a complex endeavour, tackling established practices, policies, legal structures as well as personal and professional values and norms. Enabling institutions often emerge from niche initiatives, such as courses or study programs, research projects or transfer activities, to evolve into larger realms, or may follow more pre-structured, linear top-down or bottom-up pathways. To date, universities having undergone such transformation are rare, but many experiences and niche initiatives exist within universities to draw insight, such as the establishment of inter- and transdisciplinary research centres or study programs. Increasingly, spaces for action and reflection are formed at the margins of, and in-between established institutions as an expression of current transformations of societal orders. Static structures are being replaced by temporary, fluid spaces in which knowledge is produced, received, negotiated, and transformed in new ways and linked more closely to societal transformation. Thereby, hegemonies play out in different ways: First, such transformations face resistance from long term established values and norms of disciplinarily organized academic communities influencing everyday practices and policy making. Second, such transformations are confronted by the dominance of (occidental) academic values and norms of knowledge production and challenge the legitimacy of multiple ways of knowing and cognizing in research and education. This influences the potential of trans-sector collaboration, where different ways of knowing, acting, and being are incorporated to tackle problems through transdisciplinary research.