These voices have been collected from students, teachers and policy makers all over Europe:

“In HEI there is often a mismatch of what we are researching and what is socially relevant. The benefit of transdisciplinarity is that through involving stakeholders and relevant parties, we tackle issues that are pressing and gain knowledge that is worth the effort.”

“Technological and social dynamics bring a series of challenges that cannot be addressed by traditional education – Transdisciplinary competencies such as critical thinking, multiperspectivity and application-oriented work are needed on the labour market – the skills, attitudes and values of a new generation must fit future jobs.”

“Transdisciplinary education is a motivation for students. It gives them the opportunity to learn new skills such interdisciplinary collaboration and communication, team work, problem solving by taking on different perspectives, critical thinking (evaluating own methodology) and creating long-standing cross-disciplinary networks.”

The quotes above support the need for transdisciplinary education; a need that is connected first and foremost to a constant rise in complex societal challenges which cannot be solved by single scientific disciplines but afford the collaboration of multiple academic fields and often also the expertise of additional, practical experts from outside academia. Such challenges are, for example, social inequality, climate change or the handling of conflicts and global diseases. Along with detailed knowledge from specific sciences (which are in themselves often already interdisciplinary such as biochemistry or geophysics), ethical, legal, financial, political, social or psychological considerations also need to be taken into account with regard to challenges like pandemics or climate change. This list is not all-encompassing, of course, and transdisciplinarity can be a valuable approach in very many different contexts, not only regarding global but also local concerns such as city development or mobility in rural areas. Involving students in finding solutions to local concerns and bringing them together with stakeholders such as municipalities or resident businesses, for example by organizing a case competition,1 may be a first step to introduce students to transdisciplinary approaches and to form connections with local institutions/companies which might result in longstanding cooperation.

Starting with extracurricular activities such as case competitions or hackathons through to comprehensive study programmes, transdisciplinary education can be implemented in higher education in different ways. On the following pages, we have collected good practice examples from different countries including one-time activities or individual classes/events as well as structured modules or programmes, curricular and extracurricular.