It’s time to call transdisciplinarity’s bluff

Transdisciplinarity occupies an increasingly prominent space in contemporary academic discourse, often signalled as a pathway to better science. Yet beneath its institutional endorsement and expanding literature lies a persistent conceptual ambiguity and rhetorical repetition. While formal publications continue to engage with transdisciplinarity in overly optimistic tones, scholars and practitioners often reserve their frustrations for hallway chat, coffee-corner gossip, and conversations about the tensions and contradictions of their work during conference breaks.

This provocation aims to surface and articulate the underlying tensions that have shaped the dominant narratives of transdisciplinarity. By revisiting how these narratives gained traction and interrogating the assumptions used to justify transdisciplinarity, it turns empathetic critique into a space for reflection and renewal. I invite fellow scholars to reconsider how we position transdisciplinarity within our knowledge ecosystem, what we expect it to do, how it operates, and how it relates to other frameworks that engage with similar societal and epistemic challenges.

The goal is to move beyond superficial claims and hurried publication cycles towards a more serious, ethically grounded and epistemically rigorous engagement, one that confronts transdisciplinarity’s blind spots and situates it within broader debates on knowledge, power and the moral role of science.