Reproducing the status quo, stuck in publish-or-perish mode, unable to escape the ivory tower – universities that want to work more on impact and engagement have big changes to make. In essence, DRIFT is an institutional experiment responding to that challenge. Our social enterprise is dedicated to developing knowledge in and with practice (transdisciplinary) and, by doing so, reshaping the university system (transformative). This paper describes the history and development of DRIFT and identifies the tensions and dilemmas we’re facing in this grand experiment.
Abstract
For universities to move towards positive societal impact and take a leading role in societal challenges, they need to address the fundamental institutional barriers against transformative forms of academic work. While current institutional experiments are often conceived from within the current logic of (public) academic institutions, this paper focuses on an organization that developed based on a transdisciplinary and transformative logic, the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions (DRIFT) at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Within the context of a disciplinary and more mainstream academic context, DRIFT is an institute that has as its mission to advance societal transitions towards a just and sustainable future by working in and with practice. It does so through pursuing transdisciplinary and transformative forms of academic work.
In this paper, we describe the development and institutional model of DRIFT and identify the tensions and dilemmas that were encountered during the development of this model. These tensions and dilemmas shed light upon how transformative and transdisciplinary approaches within a more traditional academic context could be developed and potentially supported.
