Global alliance for inter- and transdisciplinarity: connecting organizations to advance collaborative research and education

Abstract

This chapter describes the early development of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD Alliance). The alliance is an international organization working to build a diverse community with the goal of improving understanding and implementation of complex forms of collaboration across boundaries. We focus on the cognitive, social, emotional, and intercultural dimensions of collaboration. We describe the foundation of the ITD Alliance, discuss the need for advancing boundary-crossing and -spanning research and education and, describe its strategies and members to illustrate the varied activities and group of stakeholders brought together. We follow this by assessing and critically discussing initial steps of the ITD Alliance to support complex research and education on a global scale in coming decades.