On 3 April, the EWUU Community Day 2025 took place: an afternoon full of inspiration, connection, and boundary-crossing collaborations. With an interactive Marketplace of Ideas, in-depth Impact Dialogues, and the festive launch of the National Expertise Centre for Transdisciplinarity, the entire day was dedicated to advancing transdisciplinary innovation.
One of the highlights was the presentation of the EWUU Impact Award – a recognition of teams who, through public engagement, strengthen the visibility of research, societal impact, and transdisciplinary learning.
Désirée Hoving moderated the day and, with her sharp questions and inquisitive style, sparked lively and thought-provoking conversations.
Beyond Boundaries: The Challenges and Rewards of Transdisciplinary Collaboration
Reflections from the EWUU Community Day on Celebrating the Power of (Transdisciplinary) Collaborations
The EWUU Community Day 2025, which was held at 3 April 2025, brought together a diverse mix of students, researchers, educators, and societal partners — not just to network, but to reflect on a shared ambition: to collaborate across disciplines in meaningful ways.
While the programme showcased projects and partnerships, the day also surfaced honest conversations about the realities of transdisciplinary collaboration. What does it take to truly work across institutional and disciplinary borders? What makes it difficult, and why does it matter more than ever?
This year’s theme, Celebrating the Power of Transdisciplinary Collaborations, wasn’t just about feel-good slogans. It became an honest, layered conversation about what it really takes to work across boundaries — disciplinary, institutional, and even ideological.
We spoke to participants across the alliance — from educational designers to strategic grant advisors and researchers — to uncover the less visible but deeply human aspects of working across silos.
The Language Barrier You Didn’t Expect
Transdisciplinary collaboration doesn’t just mean bringing people from different fields together. It means learning to understand each other — and that’s not as straightforward as it sounds.
“Discipline is also a language,” said Lianne de Jong, team lead on Inter-University Education within the EWUU Alliance and educational designer at TU/e. “If you talk Dutch and I talk French, we know we’re not understanding each other. But if you talk from your expertise in communication and I talk as a designer, we might use the same words, but mean something completely different.”
Kevin Matson, Associate Professor from Wageningen University & Research echoed this. “We expected challenges in working styles, but what surprised us was how language affected our collaboration in unexpected ways — the ways our native languages influenced how we expressed ourselves, shared ideas, and understood our world.”
These barriers are subtle but real — and they slow things down unless we learn to name them.
Prototyping as a Shared Language
Some teams found creative ways to bridge these gaps. “We involved designers to shift the mode of communication to creating prototypes, which we shared with the public to get feedback,” said Kevin Matson. “That led to a lot of communication.”
Physical or visual representations helped participants ground abstract ideas, making room for discussion, disagreement, and ultimately: clarity.
Working with People Who Don’t Share Your Ideology
Transdisciplinary work often begins with shared values — sustainability, health, justice. But what happens when partners don’t agree?
“It becomes surprisingly tough,” said Wilco Hazeleger, Rector Magnificus at Utrecht University. “ But it’s also where the biggest challenges lie, and also where you can make the most impact.”
Finding common ground with ‘unusual’ partners takes effort — and humility. “It’s easy to collaborate with your friends. But the real work starts when you don’t agree and still try to move forward together.”
Students as Drivers of Change
While the EWUU Community Day programme highlighted the breadth of research across the EWUU Alliance, several participants reminded us that its future lies with students. They are not only the next generation of researchers and innovators — they’re also often more open to new ways of working together.
“Students are easier to engage with — and to cultivate understanding and stewardship about issues like water security,” said Catherine Sinnom, who helps to coordinate the CUCo-funded project All in the same boat with Kevin Matson. “If we want to make lasting changes to systems, we need to empower younger generations to impact those systems.”
Lianne de Jong shared a telling moment: “A bachelor’s student volunteering at the event told me she had never heard of the EWUU Alliance before today. That’s a wake-up call. We have so much potential to connect students — not just inform them, but actively involve them in meaningful, cross-border collaborations from the start.”
Hazeleger also pointed to the opportunity of joint educational programmes across institutions. “We have the chance to build something new together — not just in research, but in how we educate the next generation to think and act transdisciplinarily.”
Money Talks — But So Does Meaning
Researchers are pragmatic. That’s the view of Christian Jagersma, Strategic advisor at UMC Utrecht and EWUU Core Team member.
“If I send out an invitation to a general info session, hardly anyone one shows up,” he admitted. “But if I say: ‘There’s a €5 million funding opportunity and we’ll organise everything for you — you just have to show up’ — they come..”
He acknowledged that while the lure of funding might seem transactional, it often opens the door to real collaboration. “You bring people together around something concrete, and they always find common ground. It’s never not worth their time.”
Make the Invisible Work Visible
One key takeaway? Transdisciplinary work is more developed than many assume — but it’s often under the radar.
“I was surprised by how professional the field already is,” said Jagersma. “But researchers don’t always know where to start. And societal partners? They’re hard to find unless you’ve built the right networks.”
His advice: research support professionals must do more to map and support this ecosystem — and that includes giving visibility to the societal side of research.
Explore the Whitepaper on Transdisciplinary Collaboration.
Celebrating Progress, Recognizing Potential
“Transdisciplinary work isn’t new for us as an Alliance,” said Hazeleger, “but the EWUU Alliance gives us new combinations, new perspectives. We have a head start — and a chance to do this in a more deliberate, ambitious way.”
As the EWUU Alliance continues to grow the challenge is no longer just to encourage collaboration across disciplines. It’s to deepen it. To make it visible. And to make it last.
That means:
- Embracing discomfort and disagreement
- Empowering students as early changemakers
- Incentivizing meaningful collaboration
- And building institutional frameworks that support — and celebrate — the messiness of working together
Let’s continue to celebrate what transdisciplinary collaboration makes possible — even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
Photo impression of the day
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