Raising the Bar and Setting a Ceiling: The Paradox of Stimulating Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research through Funding

While research funders aim to stimulate inter- and transdisciplinary research (ITDR) through funding policies, little is known about how funding discourses and criteria shape ITDR in practice. Therefore, we set out to understand how funding requirements shape ITDR practices. We selected two funding instruments from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) that target ITDR, analyzed call information, and interviewed different actors involved in project design and execution. We saw that the funding criteria had dual effects on ITDR practices. On the one hand, eligibility criteria spurred applicants to adopt a more ITDR approach, for instance prompting collaboration with academic- and non-academic partners they would otherwise not have work with and placing societal impact more central in their approach. On the other hand, we saw that those same requirements could also be experienced as unsupportive or restrictive for ITDR practices, for instance imposing a linear approach to impact. Moreover, we saw that the impact of quality criteria on ITDR practices was more diffuse and could even be experienced to disincentivize more ITDR approaches. So, funding criteria could stimulate as well as restrict the uptake of more ITDR approaches; raising a bar and setting a ceiling. We consider this an inherent paradox that funders who aim to stimulate ITDR have to navigate by explicitly committing to the range(s) of ITDR practices they aim to support and defining corresponding funding criteria, discourses and procedure.