Producing actionable knowledge for transformative change: impacts, potentials, and challenges in transdisciplinary research

As a central part of its research and innovation strategy for sustainability, the EU funds projects that bring together the knowledge of scientists, farmers, and other actors to find solutions for societal challenges. These so-called ‘transdisciplinary’ projects aim to produce knowledge that is both scientific and actionable, i.e. context-specific and useful for actors pursuing the transition of agri-food systems toward sustainability. In reality, transdisciplinary projects often struggle to achieve the aspiration of creating deep, lasting change through knowledge production, partly because they are forced to work within systems that make sustainability transformations unfeasible for individuals and small groups. Achieving sustainability requires a more enabling policy environment: actors need to be better supported by systemic changes that are informed by and evolving along with their contextspecific needs and realities. Agroecology-TRANSECT (AE-TR) is a project that works to produce actionable knowledge for agroecological transformation. Here we provide insights for future Research and Innovation funding, and design and management of projects, based on inputs from 11 “Innovation Hubs” (IHs) in Europe: each of these is a network of farmers, researchers and other actors engaged in transitions to agroecology. The work with IHs has demonstrated various ways in which actionable knowledge production can contribute to transformative change in transdisciplinary projects. But we also saw how (perceived) systemic constraints and lock-ins can prevent actors from creating the deep transformations that are needed to address societal challenges. These require policy action.