Conceptualizing transdisciplinarity: How do visuals mean?

Transdisciplinary research is commonly understood as a research collaboration between different academic disciplines and actors from different sectors of society to co-produce knowledge needed in addressing real-world problems. In this paper, we understand transdisciplinary research as an epistemological object and study how researchers conceptualize it through visualization. To do this, we analyzed a set of related visuals in their textual context published over the last 20 years. This multi-modal analysis shows that transdisciplinarity in our set has, throughout the years, consisted of three main categories: science, practice, and the transdisciplinary research process. Transdisciplinary research has been visualized as a stable double-joint cyclical narrative starting in the settings of science and practice, after which actors join to collaborate, both depart with the results of collaboration. An assumed principle is continuously and implicitly visualized: the idea and ideal that science and practice are contributing, collaborating, and reaping benefits on the basis of equality. Supported by the literature, we problematize this way visuals obscure imbalances in practice. Finally, we discuss how visuals mean and what other ways of conceptualizing an epistemic object like transdisciplinary are possible. • We show how transdisciplinary research as an epistemic object is conceptualized through visualization. • Elements of transdisciplinary research are visually categorized into three main entities: science, practice, and a transdisciplinary process. • We identify a double-joint cyclical narrative of transdisciplinary research. • An implicitly assumed principle in the visuals is that science and practice contribute, collaborate, and reap benefits based on equality. • We discuss what other ways of (visually) conceptualizing transdisciplinary research are possible and relevant to the literature and policy.