The Responsive Research Collective is a group of scholars, educators, evaluators and organizational developers from different institutions around the world. We belief that more integrative approaches and institutional arrangements are needed to respond to an increasingly fragmented, rapidly changing and inequitable world. Since more than 10 years we have shared our experiences in inter- and transdisciplinarity with researchers, educators and practitioners, and have accompanied institutional transformation.
apl. Prof. Dr. Ulli Vilsmaier
grew up in the Austrian Alps and studied Geography. She has been teaching and researching at Salzburg University (2001–2011) and Leuphana University (2011–2020) where she held a professorship position for Transdsiciplinary Methods and served as Presidential Committee Appointee for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity, supporting the university’s transformation of research and higher education.
Her research focuses on designing, accompanying, and implementing boundary-crossing research, methods development for interface design and boundary work as well as epistemological and methodological foundations of inter- and transdisciplinarity. She has been leading research projects in sustainability, higher education and university transformation and supervising PhD and Master thesis of social, cultural and environmental scientists, artists and designers in Sustainability Science, Geography, Education and the Humanities. As visiting professor and trainer she has been providing support, accompaniment and trainings for inter- and transdisciplinarity across Europe, in Latin America, Africa and the Caucasus region while learning from international collaborators and multiple research traditions. Strongly influenced by the work of Paulo Freire and Bernhard Waldenfels, her dialogue orientation aims at personal and professional growth of people and communities while constituting spaces for transformative research and learning between established domains.
→ vilsmaier@responsiveresearch.org
→ CV
Prof. Dr. Bagele Chilisa
was born in Botswana and is a renowned post-colonial scholar, researcher, author, educator, and an important African thought leader. Her interest in community-based research has driven her to write extensively on indigenous knowledge as well as publish a book titled “Indigenous Research Methodologies”. A book that has sparked international discourse on importance of indigenous methodologies, especially in Africa. As a full Professor at the University of Botswana she has supervised more than 50 masters and PhD dissertations with diverse academic discourse and has served as external examiner for PhD thesis in the Southern African Development Community region. She has shared her intellectual knowledge about indigenous research methodologies on several platforms and at several conferences in Universities in South Africa, USA, Norway, UK, and Italy. Bagele has been recognized as the Researcher of the Year and awarded University of Botswana Research Team Leadership in 2019. She has also been awarded the Prestigious USA National Institute of Health Research Award on capacity building on HIV/AIDS.
→ Webpage
was born in Pakistan and grew up in a supportive family, but the country is still characterized by a lack of opportunity for girls, poverty, crime, and sustainability challenges. Seeing these challenges in the society has been responsible for her work and interest in sustainable development.
Her research is on transformative learning approaches to reform pedagogies in higher sustainability education. She is also a Salzburg Global Fellow at Salzburg Global Seminar. Having studied Environmental and Sustainability Science, she has managed Communications, Advocacy and Youth Mobilization at Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi, Centre of Education and Consciousness; worked as an Advisory Mentor for the Queen’s Young Leaders Program (UK) and is chairing the Youth General Assembly, a social movement, to train and mobilize youth to work on UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda, which she co- founded. As a Group of Twenty (G20) Global Changer, she was involved in proposing recommendations for education and sustainable development for G20 leaders which were presented at the G20 Summit, 2017 in Germany. She won the Global Education Supplies and Solutions Outstanding Contribution in Education Award, 2016 in Dubai. Sadaf has represented Pakistan as a Youth Delegate at UNESCO and as Youth Champion at Rise-up. She has worked as a facilitator for UNLEASH - A Global Innovation Program for the SDGs Denmark. Sadaf was awarded Green Talent 2020 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Dr. Daniela Peukert
was born in Leipzig/Germany, has a background in product design and is working as a design researcher. Her work and research focuses on designerly thinking, design methods, transdisciplinarity and the role of design in transformative processes. In her PhD at the Faculty of Sustainability Science, Leuphana University of Lueneburg, she explored the epistemic qualities of design prototyping and its potential to foster integration within transdisciplinary research processes and knowledge co-production.
As a design researcher, Daniela has worked in the fields of medical technology, regional development, home automation and mobility. As a design journalist she has written for Design Report and as and educator she has taught diverse topics including design research and methods, visual science communication and transdisciplinarity at various universities in Germany and Switzerland. In 2014 she co-founded design:transfer, a research group that dealt with questions of design in transformative processes in business, science and the public sector. As a reviewer, she has accredited several design degree programmes in Germany. Daniela's way of working is characterised by a high interest in the unknown and its people, coupled with a prototyping mindset of trying things out quickly.
Dr. Katie Ross
Katie was born and grew up near the Great Lakes, in the mid-west of the United States. Passionate about addressing the complex situations facing our societies, she studied sustainable development as an undergrad (Columbia University, New York) and masters (Victoria University, Wellington and Macquarie University, Sydney); and transformative and transdisciplinary learning for her doctorate (University of Technology Sydney).
For the last 20 years, Katie has worked in community-led non-profits and applied research institutes, with diverse initiatives in community engagement, collective learning, and action-based, transdisciplinary research for change. Her motivating questions are how can transdisciplinary processes be designed and curated to lead to meaningful and profound change both within the people participating and the situations they are seeking to improve? Katie engages processes of transformative learning to help leverage the depth and potential of transdisciplinary inquiry. For the past eight years Katie has designed and delivered creative and transformative learning experiences into award winning inter- and transdisciplinary labs, workshops, MOOCs and degrees. During her 10 years, at the University of Technology Sydney, Katie developed and led transdisciplinary projects that interwove the complex spaces of governance, community empowerment, and service delivery (energy, water, waste, sanitation) in urban, remote and developing areas. Katie is currently supporting the transdisciplinary capacities of people, agencies and diverse communities working with the regenerative land movements, so we can collectively address issues of climate change, water, food sovereignty and security, well-being, decolonisation, biodiversity, and economic justice.
→ CV
Dr. John van Breda
was born in and lived in South Africa. Currently, he is a research associate with the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST) at Stellenbosch University (SU). Prior to the CST, John was actively involved in building and managing an inter-faculty Hub for Transdisciplinarity, Sustainability, Modelling and Assessment – known as TsamaHub – for working on a wide range of sustainability challenges across disciplines and departments at SU. This TsamaHub work also included developing a transdisciplinary doctoral programme – known as TRECCAfrica – and leveragingthe necessary international funding for conducting this intra-Africa doctoral programme.
John van Breda holds several post-graduate degrees in philosophy, theology and sociology. In his PhD he developed the notion of methodological agility as a meta-level research strategy for tackling sustainability transitions in and under radically different contextual conditions. At the methods level, John has translated this broad approach into an innovative Narrative Action Research (NAR) method for doing transformative transdisciplinary research (TTDR), particularly when facing complex socio-ecological systems challenges in the context of the anthropocene.
→ web-page
Dr. Esther Meyer
Esther was born in Fürth/Germany, and has a background in Philosophy, Economics, and Sustainability Sciences, with a doctorate from the Faculty of Sustainability at Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany. Esther has significant experience in project management and lecturers across the fields of sustainability, inter- and intragenerational justice, social-ecological transformation and modes of living, with a particular interest in transformative learning and transdisciplinary research. As a lifelong learner, Esther is currently completing training in organizational development and consultancy, based on Gestalt and systems theory.
Her current role within an emerging non-profit company has provided her with experience in leading transformative research and methods in a diverse range of projects or workshops. This has added to her significant experience in working in cooperation with associations, NGOs and volunteers. In addition she has worked as a reviewer, supervisor, and lecturer at universities and summer academies with the aim of professionalizing inter- and transdisciplinary inquiry-based learning.
Esther’s belief that transformation of research and (higher) education is driven by numerous bottom-up initiatives, has led her to work closely with participatory action research groups and students in service-learning seminars, social enterprises, and citizen science projects. Esther is committed to supporting transdisciplinary change agents and those who move at the institutional boundaries of education by teaching, knowledge systematization and methodological accompaniment.
→ web-page
Dr. Thenjiwe Emily Major
I grew up in the north-eastern part of Botswana, studied in Botswana and the United States of America. As a teacher educator/philosopher, I teach philosophy at undergraduate and graduate levels and have been involved in both profession consultancy projects and academic research. All these projects have strongly integrated both Western and African methodologies to ensure culturally appropriate approaches and outcomes. I have been an expert contributor to the Transdisciplinary Summer and Winter schools – contributing an Indigenous research perspective with an emphasis on African Philosophy at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. I have used cultural and context relevant research/evaluation methods in conducting transformative research projects driven by African worldviews i.e. African knowledge systems, adoption of relational ontologies, epistemologies, axiology and methodologies.
I co-teach a qualitative research course along with Prof. B. Chilisa focused on decolonisation and Indigenous research methodologies and have also been instrumental in facilitating the Transdisciplinary Research Pilot Workshop: National Research Foundation of South Africa, training policy makers, research managers, members of the South African Global Change Science Committee, and heads of research and science service centres in transdisciplinary approaches to research. Over the last decade I have contributed to designing a Theory-Based, Cultural-Specific HIV/STI Risk Reduction Intervention for Adolescents in Botswana.
→ CV
Isabel Bueno García-Reyes
Isabel was born in Mexico City and has since lived in different regions of Mexico, learning from different contexts and being passionate about culture and diverse perspectives of life. She has a background in environmental sciences and is a Ph.D. candidate in Sustainability Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her research and teaching practice is oriented toward biocultural and relational paradigms, critical educational tools, and complex environmental systems. Interested in participating in learning and action communities from a perspective of participatory action research and co-construction towards the commons, she collaborates in projects towards joint sustainability objectives fostering alternative pathways from the South. She is also part of the collective Socioecological Action-Research Group (GIASE) in Mexico and has learned from other contexts and perspectives in institutions such as the University of Brasília, Universidad Veracruzana, Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP), La Molina Agrarian University (Peru), and UNAM.
→ CV
The Responsive Research Collective is a group of scholars, educators, evaluators and organizational developers from different institutions around the world. We belief that more integrative approaches and institutional arrangements are needed to respond to an increasingly fragmented, rapidly changing and inequitable world. Since more than 10 years we have shared our experiences in inter- and transdisciplinarity with researchers, educators and practitioners, and have accompanied institutional transformation.
apl. Prof. Dr. Ulli Vilsmaier
grew up in the Austrian Alps and studied Geography. She has been teaching and researching at Salzburg University (2001–2011) and Leuphana University (2011–2020) where she held a professorship position for Transdsiciplinary Methods and served as Presidential Committee Appointee for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity, supporting the university’s transformation of research and higher education.
Her research focuses on designing, accompanying, and implementing boundary-crossing research, methods development for interface design and boundary work as well as epistemological and methodological foundations of inter- and transdisciplinarity. She has been leading research projects in sustainability, higher education and university transformation and supervising PhD and Master thesis of social, cultural and environmental scientists, artists and designers in Sustainability Science, Geography, Education and the Humanities. As visiting professor and trainer she has been providing support, accompaniment and trainings for inter- and transdisciplinarity across Europe, in Latin America, Africa and the Caucasus region while learning from international collaborators and multiple research traditions. Strongly influenced by the work of Paulo Freire and Bernhard Waldenfels, her dialogue orientation aims at personal and professional growth of people and communities while constituting spaces for transformative research and learning between established domains.
→ vilsmaier@responsiveresearch.org
→ CV
Prof. Dr. Bagele Chilisa
was born in Botswana and is a renowned post-colonial scholar, researcher, author, educator, and an important African thought leader. Her interest in community-based research has driven her to write extensively on indigenous knowledge as well as publish a book titled “Indigenous Research Methodologies”. A book that has sparked international discourse on importance of indigenous methodologies, especially in Africa. As a full Professor at the University of Botswana she has supervised more than 50 masters and PhD dissertations with diverse academic discourse and has served as external examiner for PhD thesis in the Southern African Development Community region. She has shared her intellectual knowledge about indigenous research methodologies on several platforms and at several conferences in Universities in South Africa, USA, Norway, UK, and Italy. Bagele has been recognized as the Researcher of the Year and awarded University of Botswana Research Team Leadership in 2019. She has also been awarded the Prestigious USA National Institute of Health Research Award on capacity building on HIV/AIDS.
→ Webpage
was born in Pakistan and grew up in a supportive family, but the country is still characterized by a lack of opportunity for girls, poverty, crime, and sustainability challenges. Seeing these challenges in the society has been responsible for her work and interest in sustainable development.
Her research is on transformative learning approaches to reform pedagogies in higher sustainability education. She is also a Salzburg Global Fellow at Salzburg Global Seminar. Having studied Environmental and Sustainability Science, she has managed Communications, Advocacy and Youth Mobilization at Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi, Centre of Education and Consciousness; worked as an Advisory Mentor for the Queen’s Young Leaders Program (UK) and is chairing the Youth General Assembly, a social movement, to train and mobilize youth to work on UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda, which she co- founded. As a Group of Twenty (G20) Global Changer, she was involved in proposing recommendations for education and sustainable development for G20 leaders which were presented at the G20 Summit, 2017 in Germany. She won the Global Education Supplies and Solutions Outstanding Contribution in Education Award, 2016 in Dubai. Sadaf has represented Pakistan as a Youth Delegate at UNESCO and as Youth Champion at Rise-up. She has worked as a facilitator for UNLEASH - A Global Innovation Program for the SDGs Denmark. Sadaf was awarded Green Talent 2020 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
Dr. Daniela Peukert
was born in Leipzig/Germany, has a background in product design and is working as a design researcher. Her work and research focuses on designerly thinking, design methods, transdisciplinarity and the role of design in transformative processes. In her PhD at the Faculty of Sustainability Science, Leuphana University of Lueneburg, she explored the epistemic qualities of design prototyping and its potential to foster integration within transdisciplinary research processes and knowledge co-production.
As a design researcher, Daniela has worked in the fields of medical technology, regional development, home automation and mobility. As a design journalist she has written for Design Report and as and educator she has taught diverse topics including design research and methods, visual science communication and transdisciplinarity at various universities in Germany and Switzerland. In 2014 she co-founded design:transfer, a research group that dealt with questions of design in transformative processes in business, science and the public sector. As a reviewer, she has accredited several design degree programmes in Germany. Daniela's way of working is characterised by a high interest in the unknown and its people, coupled with a prototyping mindset of trying things out quickly.
Dr. Katie Ross
Katie was born and grew up near the Great Lakes, in the mid-west of the United States. Passionate about addressing the complex situations facing our societies, she studied sustainable development as an undergrad (Columbia University, New York) and masters (Victoria University, Wellington and Macquarie University, Sydney); and transformative and transdisciplinary learning for her doctorate (University of Technology Sydney).
For the last 20 years, Katie has worked in community-led non-profits and applied research institutes, with diverse initiatives in community engagement, collective learning, and action-based, transdisciplinary research for change. Her motivating questions are how can transdisciplinary processes be designed and curated to lead to meaningful and profound change both within the people participating and the situations they are seeking to improve? Katie engages processes of transformative learning to help leverage the depth and potential of transdisciplinary inquiry. For the past eight years Katie has designed and delivered creative and transformative learning experiences into award winning inter- and transdisciplinary labs, workshops, MOOCs and degrees. During her 10 years, at the University of Technology Sydney, Katie developed and led transdisciplinary projects that interwove the complex spaces of governance, community empowerment, and service delivery (energy, water, waste, sanitation) in urban, remote and developing areas. Katie is currently supporting the transdisciplinary capacities of people, agencies and diverse communities working with the regenerative land movements, so we can collectively address issues of climate change, water, food sovereignty and security, well-being, decolonisation, biodiversity, and economic justice.
→ CV
Dr. John van Breda
was born in and lived in South Africa. Currently, he is a research associate with the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST) at Stellenbosch University (SU). Prior to the CST, John was actively involved in building and managing an inter-faculty Hub for Transdisciplinarity, Sustainability, Modelling and Assessment – known as TsamaHub – for working on a wide range of sustainability challenges across disciplines and departments at SU. This TsamaHub work also included developing a transdisciplinary doctoral programme – known as TRECCAfrica – and leveragingthe necessary international funding for conducting this intra-Africa doctoral programme.
John van Breda holds several post-graduate degrees in philosophy, theology and sociology. In his PhD he developed the notion of methodological agility as a meta-level research strategy for tackling sustainability transitions in and under radically different contextual conditions. At the methods level, John has translated this broad approach into an innovative Narrative Action Research (NAR) method for doing transformative transdisciplinary research (TTDR), particularly when facing complex socio-ecological systems challenges in the context of the anthropocene.
→ web-page
Dr. Esther Meyer
Esther was born in Fürth/Germany, and has a background in Philosophy, Economics, and Sustainability Sciences, with a doctorate from the Faculty of Sustainability at Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany. Esther has significant experience in project management and lecturers across the fields of sustainability, inter- and intragenerational justice, social-ecological transformation and modes of living, with a particular interest in transformative learning and transdisciplinary research. As a lifelong learner, Esther is currently completing training in organizational development and consultancy, based on Gestalt and systems theory.
Her current role within an emerging non-profit company has provided her with experience in leading transformative research and methods in a diverse range of projects or workshops. This has added to her significant experience in working in cooperation with associations, NGOs and volunteers. In addition she has worked as a reviewer, supervisor, and lecturer at universities and summer academies with the aim of professionalizing inter- and transdisciplinary inquiry-based learning.
Esther’s belief that transformation of research and (higher) education is driven by numerous bottom-up initiatives, has led her to work closely with participatory action research groups and students in service-learning seminars, social enterprises, and citizen science projects. Esther is committed to supporting transdisciplinary change agents and those who move at the institutional boundaries of education by teaching, knowledge systematization and methodological accompaniment.
→ web-page
Dr. Thenjiwe Emily Major
I grew up in the north-eastern part of Botswana, studied in Botswana and the United States of America. As a teacher educator/philosopher, I teach philosophy at undergraduate and graduate levels and have been involved in both profession consultancy projects and academic research. All these projects have strongly integrated both Western and African methodologies to ensure culturally appropriate approaches and outcomes. I have been an expert contributor to the Transdisciplinary Summer and Winter schools – contributing an Indigenous research perspective with an emphasis on African Philosophy at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. I have used cultural and context relevant research/evaluation methods in conducting transformative research projects driven by African worldviews i.e. African knowledge systems, adoption of relational ontologies, epistemologies, axiology and methodologies.
I co-teach a qualitative research course along with Prof. B. Chilisa focused on decolonisation and Indigenous research methodologies and have also been instrumental in facilitating the Transdisciplinary Research Pilot Workshop: National Research Foundation of South Africa, training policy makers, research managers, members of the South African Global Change Science Committee, and heads of research and science service centres in transdisciplinary approaches to research. Over the last decade I have contributed to designing a Theory-Based, Cultural-Specific HIV/STI Risk Reduction Intervention for Adolescents in Botswana.
→ CV
Isabel Bueno García-Reyes
Isabel was born in Mexico City and has since lived in different regions of Mexico, learning from different contexts and being passionate about culture and diverse perspectives of life. She has a background in environmental sciences and is a Ph.D. candidate in Sustainability Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Her research and teaching practice is oriented toward biocultural and relational paradigms, critical educational tools, and complex environmental systems. Interested in participating in learning and action communities from a perspective of participatory action research and co-construction towards the commons, she collaborates in projects towards joint sustainability objectives fostering alternative pathways from the South. She is also part of the collective Socioecological Action-Research Group (GIASE) in Mexico and has learned from other contexts and perspectives in institutions such as the University of Brasília, Universidad Veracruzana, Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla (BUAP), La Molina Agrarian University (Peru), and UNAM.
→ CV
