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My urge to step out of my disciplinary comfort zone led me to CuCo and SPARK where together with a team of researchers and coaches we began our interdisciplinary journey. I am delighted to be part of a very unusual and rather interdisciplinary team where we all came together bringing different knowledge and expertise from our own disciplines with a shared aim, to support society and empower sustainable decision-making processes.
Before moving to Utrecht to work as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pedagogical and Educational Sciences, I completed my PhD at the International Doctoral School REASON at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich and continued my research at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology. I have also worked as a teacher educator at several international master’s programs at the TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology and the Catholic University of Applied Sciences in Munich.
My research interests lie in the intersection of university teachers’ professional development and learning (e.g., competencies and skills) along with the incorporation of innovative instructional practices (e.g., challenge-based learning). I am currently involved in a research project exploring mechanisms for supporting Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) (Alliance WUR-TUE-UU-UMC) where we investigate the role of university teachers, coaches, and experts in CBL. Together with two colleagues from my department, we have also initiated the first Challenge-Based Learning course in social sciences where (among others) we aim to identify needs to support university teachers’ professional development efforts in CBL.
Despoina Georgiou - UU
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My research is about understanding and enabling contemporary transformations towards sustainability, and I am very committed to inter and transdisciplinarity. I have focused on urban, policy and societal experimentation with sustainability, novel approaches for transformative innovation, and on the role of transdisciplinarity in supporting these processes.
Increasingly, I am interested in the intersection between personal and societal transformations, considering how we can prepare students with knowledge and wisdom to navigate turbulent times as engaged change agents. As an Assistant professor at TU/e, I teach students of all levels with a technical background to think critically about socio-technical change, sustainability, and responsible innovation.
You will find me once a week at CUCO, where I am part of a team exploring how the Centre can fund, support, and enable transdisciplinary research. I am also preparing a spark project to facilitate transdisciplinary research projects' design and reflexive monitoring.
The Spark course is unique. It is a creative and profound process that helped consolidate my competencies for interdisciplinary research and hone into promising new ideas. It’s a breath of fresh air!
Jonas Colen Ladeia Torrens - TU/e
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My research is located at the crossroads of (animal) welfare, sensor-based and precision livestock farming (PLF), and ethics. I studied veterinary medicine and obtained a PhD at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover (DE). Before moving to Utrecht University, I worked as an animal scientist at WUR (NL). At UU, I joined the Centre for Sustainable Animal Stewardship (CenSAS), which brings together science and society in a dialogue on animal related issues. Among other projects, I investigated the concept of animal resilience, the socio-ethical dimensions of PLF, the systematics of responsibilities for animal welfare, and the behaviour of poultry and pigs. I am very excited to be part of CUCo’s SPARK program in which interdisciplinarity is the goal (and not a means), where I get to know researchers I would probably never have sought collaboration with in the first place, and where we create something new and unusual together. I am convinced that this integration of ‘unusual’ academic disciplines has added value to understand and possibly change how we look at each other and how we look at animals. In the team that I left phase 1 of the SPARK with, we are interested in the role of people’s scientific literacy for decision making processes related to various pressing societal challenges, such as climate change, healthy food or animal welfare. Our team-goal is to be inspired and learn from each other without losing our own disciplinary identity along the way.
Mona Giersberg - UU
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In 2021 I started working as an Assistant Professor at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development of Utrecht University. My research is focused on the cycling of carbon and water between atmosphere and ecosystems using models and observations. In particular, I am interested in how terrestrial processes (e.g., photosynthesis, evaporation) are linked to environmental conditions and impacted by extreme events (e.g., droughts, floods, heatwaves). In many cases, the research comes down to quantification of extreme events or quantification of processes in the climate system.
Within CUCo, I am participating in the project "All in the Same Boat", which deals with water security in a changing climate, from different perspectives. Also, I was part of the first series of Spark workshops that was organized in September 2022. I appreciate the unusual research methods that are promoted by CUCo, which contrast more traditional and sometimes rigid research approaches. I have always enjoyed collaborating with researchers from my own field of research or closely related fields. CUCo stimulates collaborations that extend beyond disciplinary domains. It is simulating to exchange ideas with passionate researchers from various backgrounds and I aim to contribute to this inspiring atmosphere.
Gerbrand Koren - UU
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Joining CUCo was a necessity. Over the past few years, I have often worked in multidisciplinary teams, but without having the support for how to collaborate. With CUCo, I discovered the potential to develop creative and innovative projects together with many different disciplines and experts. My main interests are in participatory research and co-design of serious games for sustainable transition. In 2021 I co-founded the WUR Game Hub, at Wageningen University, connecting multiple researchers that use games to bridge science and society. Throughout the last years at Wageningen University I have been teaching and conducting research in different disciplines focusing on food systems and participatory methods. Currently I am a lecturer at Farming System Ecology group and researcher for the SESAM project and WUR Game Hub at the Geo Information Science and Remote Sensing group at Wageningen University. In the future I aim to dive into transdisciplinary science by being an “unusual collaborator” in education and research projects.
Federico Andreotti - WUR
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My research explores human-environment interactions in the context of environmental change (e.g. environmental degradation, climate change, biodiversity loss). Necessarily, I need to integrate different scientific disciplines and approaches to better understand emerging environmental changes that affect and are affected by human decision-making. As such, inter- and transdisciplinarity are natural parts of the research processes I engage in. Gaming and simulations are some of the ways I co-create understanding of complex systems, experience potential future trajectories, and unpack future-looking decision-making (e.g. dependencies, differing capacities, uncertainties). I have been involved in a number of collaborative endeavours to engage with people at my home university as well as nationally, and internationally. Together with Federico, we have developed a space for people to connect people in Wageningen University & Research for gaming.
As a WIMEK postdoctoral researcher on transdisciplinary research, I am looking at how we can take transdisciplinary research and education further and create space for knowledge sharing. I am encouraged by the physical and thinking space CUCo offers EWUU researchers to explore unusual collaborations and innovative ideas. Moreover, the Spark grant is set up more like a process than a project, which gives participants the space to develop interdisciplinary competencies and grow their network with people outside their institution while developing their research visions. CUCo is an exciting place to meet. Whenever I have a day at CUCo or with people from CUCo, I leave inspired and energized.
I look forward to entering the next phase of the Spark process and hope that you also find your research spark.
