From Buzzword to Practice: Doing Transdisciplinarity Right
- Lakshmi Srinivasan
- Aug 21
- 4 min read
The words “Trans-disciplinarity” and “Interdisciplinarity” have become the educational equivalent of “intersectional feminism” in social media. Everyone uses it in a sentence, especially in social media campaigns and marketing slogans - about twenty percent use them correctly! However, I wouldn’t chalk it up as the fault of institutions, their leaders or employees. Much like the use of AI, they are just capabilities that are highly in demand and it has almost become a non-negotiable to learn them. So, how can educational institutions and leadership take forward the slogan into their vision, curriculum and classrooms?
Here is a quickstart guide:
Clarity on the Approach
In order to run a successful program, everyone in the institution must understand the distinctions between the three approaches - Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary. Though this seems like a no-brainer, you’d be surprised by HOW often institutional leaders, faculty and students get this completely wrong! Just to catch us up, here is a brief descriptor.
Multidisciplinary – Different disciplines taught side-by-side; connection is thematic but methods remain distinct.
Interdisciplinary – Integration of disciplinary methods from 2 or more disciplines to address shared problems.
Transdisciplinary – Moves beyond disciplines, integrating academic and non-academic knowledge (community wisdom, industry practice, lived experience) to co-create new frameworks.
If you would like to read more about these three modes, click the button below!
Combined Execution
Your curriculum cannot contain only ONE approach - this is setting you up for failure!
Based on needs and context, the curriculum needs to have a mix of methods. For building strong foundational skills, uni-disciplinary modes of teaching may be better. For projects that tackle complex issues, the institution can employ a mix of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches where investigation becomes transdisciplinary and execution or resolution can be interdisciplinary.
For instance, a three year program on climate change and urban resilience may build strong foundations for students through a mutli-disciplinary mode by offering varied courses like structural systems, ecology, or research methods. In the second or third year, students may shift to a project mode, where the investigation may be transdisciplinary, involving communities, NGOs, and city officials to bring in lived experience. The execution could become interdisciplinary, where architects, sociologists, and environmental scientists integrate their methods to co-create solutions. This scaffolding moves students from disciplinary depth to real-world, boundary-crossing collaboration.
Making Space For Collaboration
If the curriculum needs to be truly cutting edge, the collaboration and co-design process needs to start from the highest level. Too often, programs are designed in silos and only later attempt to “add in” interdisciplinarity. Instead, institutions should intentionally create cross-university, cross-expert, and community-based collaborations at the very start. Imagine curriculum boards that don’t just include faculty, but also bring in industry leaders, policymakers, NGOs, and local community representatives. This ensures the context for modules is set not only by academic expertise but also by the realities of practice and lived experience. Such an approach prevents the curriculum from being overly theoretical or outdated, and instead grounds it in emerging challenges, diverse perspectives, and actionable insights. The result is a program where students don’t just learn about complex problems, but are equipped to engage with them alongside the very stakeholders who face them in real time.
Faculty Development Programs
Faculty are the most valuable asset of any institution, and their role becomes even more critical when delivering interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary programs. For a curriculum to succeed, faculty need to be upskilled not only in their own subject areas but also in how to collaborate across fields. This means going beyond subject expertise to developing skills in co-design, facilitation, and integration of diverse knowledge systems. Structured faculty development programs can play a key role here—providing toolkits to help reframe module outcomes, offering workshops on collaborative pedagogy, and creating spaces where faculty can experiment with new teaching approaches. Just as students learn by doing, faculty also need opportunities to practice interdisciplinary work with peers and external experts. An institution that invests in its faculty this way ensures that its programs are not just well-designed on paper but are delivered with creativity, openness, and confidence in the classroom.
Industry Relationships and Policy Understanding
A robust curriculum sits at the intersection of three key forces: the vision of the institution, the needs of industry, and the framework of government policy. Too often, programs lean too heavily on just one of these pillars—chasing industry trends without academic depth, or aligning with policy without considering employability. A healthier approach is to design the curriculum as a continuous exchange between all three. This means regularly engaging with industry partners to understand emerging skill demands, while also aligning with governmental educational requirements such as NEP and UGC guidelines, and ensuring that these are filtered through the long-term vision of the institution. When this balance is struck, programs are not only compliant and future-ready, but also relevant and competitive—creating graduates who are well-prepared for real-world challenges while staying rooted in academic rigor. The outcome is a win-win-win: industry gains talent that is job-ready, institutions build credibility and leadership, and students benefit from both opportunity and adaptability.
At the end of the day, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity cannot remain empty slogans or trendy hashtags; they must be lived practices that shape how institutions design, deliver, and evolve their curricula. By building clarity of approach, weaving multiple methods into learning, fostering genuine collaboration, investing in faculty development, and balancing institutional vision with industry and policy needs, educational leaders can move from rhetoric to real transformation. The future belongs to institutions that embrace complexity with openness—equipping students not only with disciplinary depth, but with the agility to collaborate across boundaries, engage with communities, and co-create solutions for challenges the world has yet to imagine.
Want to know more on how to build a robust curriculum or flexible cross-discipline teams? Lakshmi has a decade of experience in working with cross-disciplinary teams and researching & teaching through interdisciplinary, transdiscipliary methods!
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