1. White paper - Transdisciplinarity in Digital Life Norway
- Author
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Hesjedal, Maria Bårdsen and Strand, Roger
- Subjects
white paper ,interdisciplinarity ,convergence ,transdisciplinarity ,integration - Abstract
In 2014, the Research Council of Norway (RCN) launched its strategic initiative for biotechnology research called “Digital Life – Convergence for Innovation”. The Centre for Digital Life Norway (DLN) was created in 2015 as a national virtual centre for biotech research and innovation. At the time of writing the centre consisted of a national networking project, 17 directly funded research projects and 18 associated research projects, as well as a research school and a strategic innovation project. In 2021 the national centre has begun its second period, with more partners and an even clearer mandate to change the Norwegian biotech sector, by way of – metaphorically expressed – being a flagship and acting as a lighthouse. In the original vision, the flagship and lighthouse character of the Digital Life initiative was above all meant to rely on the development of a new style of knowledge production, characterised by the concepts of “integration”, “interdisciplinarity”, “convergence” and “transdisciplinarity”. Indeed, throughout the processes of policy development, planning and funding – as well as during the operational phase of DLN - the notion of transdisciplinarity has been emphasised: DLN research and DLN activities in general should be, or at least strive towards becoming, transdisciplinary. While the original strategic policy document for Digital Life (RCN, 2014) never explicitly defined transdisciplinarity as such, it was implicitly defined as a mode of collaboration and interaction between research disciplines that was “something more” than interdisciplinarity, with higher ambitions and with an aim of tighter integration of different types of knowledge in order to solve societal challenges.
- Published
- 2021
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