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Jana Thierfelder

Since I encountered transdisciplinarity it questioned me in the most productive ways and helped me to look at phenomena of the world from perspectives I wouldn’t have come across otherwise. Transdisciplinarity is a mode of thinking, doing and working that I love to practice in my projects and together with students.

Disciplined in what?!

I was disciplined with a BA in Visual Communication Design at the Merz Akademie in Stuttgart that I graduated from in 2012. This first education was followed by an MA in Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) where I received the tools of transdisciplinary working and thinking. A further MA training in Social Anthropology at the University of Bern helped me to deepen the empirical and especially ethnographic methods that became important to me during my projects in transdisciplinarity. Since 2017 I am doing a doctorate in Studies in the Arts (SINTA) at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern, called Challenging interfaces. The epistemic role of design in evolutionary biological knowledge production.

Throughout my education the question of the diverse forms of knowledge that can be performed through and by means of design accompanied me. My conviction of the potential of transdisciplinarity did not guide me into design research as it may seem obvious but rather into the field of Science and Technology Studies. However, not entirely ignoring design research, combining it with STS enables me to bring together and question various forms of knowledge, beyond design.

Since 2015 I am collaborating with biologists. In field and lab studies I shed light on their knowledge production methods and their engagement with aesthetic practices. What role do the tools and media they employ during their fieldwork and processing for data play? What role does this aesthetic surplus play in the formalization and representation of knowledge about phenomena in nature? What modes of observation can be encountered among the actors in the field? How can individual relationships between the human and non-human be represented and lead to a form of objectivity that is more truthful to the real world (Haraway 2016) and allows to question the governance between the human and non-human?

Since the start of this project, I am part of the research staff at the Master of Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts, which allowed me to combine my research topics with the curriculum of this MA program. I, thus, focus especially on art and science collaborations that I facilitate. Particularly topics of ethnographic practices as part of artistic practice as well as the theoretical framework of Science and Technology Studies are the core of my teaching. With regard to situated objectivity, I am also particularly interested in the analysis of the use of language, such as the development of metaphors or narratives, as a way of doing cultural analysis and science studies.

Who teaches who?

In transdisciplinary teaching, I regularly encounter myself, my co-lecturers and students in various roles that do not always correspond with the one of a lecturer or a student. The roles are shifting depending on expertise and experience and often students and lecturers swap them. The more heterogeneous the group of lecturers and students is, the more expertise that comes together, the more the hierarchies seem to disappear and the role of the lecturers often becomes the role of a facilitator or mediator, sometimes also one of a student, rather than an expert. I am interested in these diverse roles in transdisciplinary teaching settings and how they can be made productive as an educational practice.

Besides this, when it comes to practice within transdisciplinary courses different approaches to tasks can be observed. This can be an approach by (1) conversations or dialogues, by (2) defining a common language, by (3) setting rules or methods of work, by (4) finding a common boundary object that can be approached from the various expertise that comes together or by (5) starting from the existing material, resources or skills. These settings are usually highly shaped by the togetherness of the students, their exchange, discussion and require high awareness of responsibility for each other as well as care. I am interested in these approaches that I have observed over my time as a lecturer and how these can be facilitated and practised more consciously as transdisciplinary teaching and learning methods.

The Master in Transdisciplinarity Studies in the Arts is a course that supports highly individualised teaching and learning by offering one-to-one mentoring sessions in addition to the curriculum to each student. Particularly through this close collaboration between students and teachers, the curriculum can be developed based on the student’s demands and trending interests. It also allows lecturers to engage their interests and topics into the curriculum. This I consider a great opportunity to learn from each other in non-hierarchical teaching settings where dichotomies such as student-master, lay-expert, theory-practice can be questioned and overcome.

Since 2017 I am doing the Faculty Visits, a program offered by ZHdK for further education for lecturers in higher education. In the context of this I deal with the different roles of actors in transdisciplinary teaching and learning settings. In 2017 and 2018 I was part of the Recherche and Interventiongroup (RIG) of the Merz Akademie where we conducted a recherché and a symposium about historical and current models of teaching. In this context we reflected on future perspectives of education, teaching and knowledge production.
In the project RASL Transdisciplinary Research I am employed as scientific staff and am excited about further exchange in regard to these topics and to meet people with similar questions and interests.