Supporting Early-Career Researchers: Strategies in Transdisciplinary Project Design

A growing body of academic literature highlights the inherent challenges in conducting transdisciplinary (TD) research. These challenges, particularly the institutional and cultural barriers, can be especially detrimental to those who are early in their academic career. To ensure the success of transdisciplinary efforts and prevent those involved from being disadvantaged, it is critical to develop practical actions to address these challenges. This paper presents a case study of the Made Smarter Innovation: Centre for People-Led Digitalisation, a $5 million, engineering led, transdisciplinary research centre. Drawing on prior experience of running TD projects, the Executive Team have implemented organisational and management strategies aimed at mitigating the negative impact on researchers. As the funding nears its conclusion, we conduct a focus group involving twelve Research Associates and Assistants, either currently or recently employed in the centre, to capture their reflections on these initiatives. The findings illustrate that organisational and management strategies can mitigate the challenges faced by researchers. Establishing a clear mission and vision for the project while giving researchers the freedom to design their studies and the journals they target, empowers them to manage their individual career path. Additionally, to alleviate the additional burden of industry outputs, it is essential to allocate funding for administrative and impact support within the project. Future efforts should focus on creating more structured career development programs which can be tailored to the career aspirations of the individual researcher.