I have been writing a lot about knowledge integration. I have written about crossdisciplinary knowledge integration, interdisciplinary knowledge integration, transdisciplinary knowledge integration and extradisciplinary knowledge integration.

I have also written about being a crossdisciplinary scholar or team scientist; interdisciplinary scholar or team scientist, transdisciplinary scholar or team scientist.

I have not written about extradisciplinary scholar and team scientist because such a scholar or team scientist is still rare in the academia of most universities around the world. However, I know just mentioning it is enough to arouse curiosity in people who are non-disciplinary in thinking and reasoning and who write beyond disciplinary boundaries. Before I go deeper in the gist of my current article, let me say something about extra-disciplinarity.

In my article “Knowledge Integration Revolution in Higher Education: Interdisciplinarity” published by Muwado on November 2, 2023, I defined extradisciplinarity as:  The knowledge way of society that is not compelled to bow to disciplines of knowledge….

 in his article, “Extradisciplinary Investigations: Towards a New Critique of Institutions”, Brian Holmes (2007) suggests that academic extradisciplinary investigations are possible, but not without structural and functional changes of the university first. He writes that the extradisciplinary ambition is to carry out rigorous investigations on terrains as far away from art as finance, biotech, geography, urbanism, psychiatry, the electromagnetic spectrum, etc, to bring forth on those terrains the “free play of the faculties” and the intersubjective experimentations that are characteristic of modern art, but also to try to identify, inside those same domains, the spectacular or instrumental uses so often made of the subversive liberty of aesthetic play.

In a way Holmes is calling for new institutionalisation of knowledge and design of projects and programmes to reflect oneness of knowledge and interconnectedness of phenomena and the world, and world views. However, it is important to observe that in traditional cultural societies of the world extradisciplinary practice is the rule rather than the exception because life and interactions in their ecosystems, environments and ecologies are non-disciplinary.

In their article, “Academic data science: Transdisciplinary and extradisciplinary visions” Tanweer and Steinhoff (2023) relate transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity in academic data science; meaning some useful academic data lie outside the disciplines. Both transdisciplinary and extradisciplinary visions can lead to investigations that avail such data.

Apparently, Bates University College, in Canada, is already conducting extradisciplinary studies as an academic programme with “Extradisciplinary courses that fall outside the domain of the college’s existing departments and programmes”. Extradiscipline is defined as “a field that exists to facilitate knowledge exchange beyond transdisciplinarity”.

A graduate of the college says, “A Bates education is amongst the finest with its excellent curriculum, professors and leaning ratio. The academic environment is very collaborative and not divisive. Facilities are modern and up to date along with an abundance of activities. Maine is a year-round playground for those who enjoy recreating outdoors to recharge their batteries”.

According to Christopher Basgier (2014), of University of North Dakota, in his article, “Extra-Disciplinary Writing in the Disciplines: Towards a Metagenetic Pedagogy” it is possible to write extradisciplinarily even in the disciplines. Indeed, many of my own articles have been written extradisciplinarily, without denouncing disciplinary belonging, to widen knowledge generation and reach out to different publics, communities and individuals engaged in teaching and learning outside university settings.

In his article, “Extradisciplinary Risk-Taking: Design Education as Institutional Critique”, published in Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education Volume 18 Number 1, Oliver Vodeb (2019) of RMIT University, suggests a three-level model of extradisciplinary risk-taking as institutional critique. In particular he advances reasons why we need to take risk in communication design education.

Lehman University College, USA, conducts independent extradisciplinary studies, permit students to participate in reading tutorials, fieldwork (including work experience), research projects, or special projects in an area for which there is not a course in a department or interdisciplinary programme. The topic for any of these should be submitted to a faculty member likely to share an interest in it.

If the faculty member accepts the topic and is convinced of the applicant’s ability to pursue the proposal, the faculty member refers the student to the Office of Academic Standards and Evaluation for application. Students must secure final approval of the proposal from the Office of Academic Standards and Evaluation prior to registration for any semester. Students who are approved for Independent Extradisciplinary Studies must register for the study on a pass/fail basis. Credits earned may not exceed fifteen per semester nor total more than thirty.

Extradisciplinarity is beyond the scope of my current article. Those wishing to develop interest in extradisciplinary education; particularly in communication design education, can proceed from here. My interest in this article is transdisciplinarity as it facilitates the integration of certified and non-certified experts, stakeholders and practitioners in our complex, interconnected and interdependent world in one spectrum of thinking and action. Many of you reading the article are either certified experts or non-certified experts.

Whatever is the case, take a cue from this article to rethink your approach to knowledge generation, transfer and use, and your professionalism altogether in order to fit in the 21st Century, a century of new knowledge production, exchange and communication and dominated by the World Wide Web. We have already witnessed so many graduates from the discipline’s unemployable, because the problems we want the suitable graduates to help us resolve do not fit in disciplinary cocoon nor lend themselves to the simple solutions frequently offered by disciplinary experts.

As I have stated many times before, their solutions have not only become our new problems but have ended up complicating our already existing problems.

In the past, I have written about transdisciplinary science, transdisciplinary education, transdisciplinary thinking, transdisciplinary research, transdisciplinary teaching or transdisciplinary learning. Whatever the case, they all fit in the new thinking about who an educated person is or should be in the century as I have articulated and clarified in a recent article “Transition from disciplinarily-educated to transdisciplinarily – educated persons of the 21st century and beyond”, which exists as a PDF document. In that article I write, “With increased knowledge generation within and beyond fields of specialisation, the concept of “an educated person” is being rethought. Someone who can think, rethink, reason, develop information, write, participate in critical thinking and analysis or teach and learn across arbitrary academic lines is educated. New knowledge production systems or cultures include interdisciplinarity, crossdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity”.

Therefore, by now, if you have been reading my articles on knowledge integration, you should be aware that apart from disciplinarily educated persons, who still dominate research, teaching and learning at our institutions of higher education, these days we have interdisciplinarily educated people, interdisciplinarily educated people, transdisciplinarily educated people and extradisciplinarily educated people. They all operate in different dimensions of education, yet education is one, just as all knowledge is one or all science is one.   

Transdisciplinarity is linked with new frameworks for health and wellness that transcend disciplinary and interdisciplinary inputs, involvement of stakeholders outside the academy in team-based research (Klein, 2014). This is why transdisciplinarity, like interdisciplinarity, crossdisciplinarity and extradisciplinarity, is called a team science. However, Antonietta Di Giulio and Rico Defila (2018), like Di Giulio and Defila (2017) and Defila R and di Giulio A. (;2015, conceive transdisciplinarity as a special format of interdisciplinarity, where, in addition to scholars from different academic disciplines, future research users contribute substantially to the research enterprise. The future research users are the “experience-based experts” or “non-certified experts” expounded on elsewhere in this article.

In their article “Conducting integrated research. A critical literature review of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research”. Burton R, Ronningen K, and Wedderburn L. (2008) see transdisciplinarity as the highest form of integrated project design in the real world, involving not only academics in multiple disciplines, but also multiple non-academic participants (e.g. land managers, user groups, the general public) in a manner that combines interdisciplinarity with participatory approaches. On the other hand, extradisciplinary research is carried out by non-academic or non-disciplined traditional and cultural people who may not have seen a blackboard in a school; for example, when they are researching herbal medicines.

Extradisciplinarians are non-certified experts. Whatever the case, certified experts and non-certified experts are all stakeholders in a transdisciplinary research enterprise in a real-world problem challenge. Some may be the problem owners or the practitioners in the world of practice.

Therefore, if we are talking of experts, we have to recognize the following categories of experts: Disciplinary experts, crossdisciplinary experts, interdisciplinary experts, transdisciplinary experts and extradisciplinary experts. All these are certified experts. They are called certified because at the conclusion of their studies they are issued with certificates to prove that they successfully completed their studies.

Specifically, to be certified is to be officially recognised as possessing certain qualifications or meeting certain standards. The standards met might be for a diploma, a first degree, a second degree or a third degree in any disciplinary, crossdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary or extradisciplinary undertaking in education. However, it is still true that even if there has been growing progress in the role of the team sciences in education, we are yet to see actors in the team science being recognised as such with one certificate.  We have seen people who have achieved jointly in a certain field being recognized together with join Nobel Prizes. When we begin seeing team scientists getting joint bachelors, masters, doctoral and post-doctoral degrees, then the team sciences will have fully liberated themselves from the disciplinarily dominated academic environments. Critical thinking will also emerge as liberated. Education will be truly sustainable.

The Academy published in September 2023 an article “International Summer School – Transdisciplinarity methods and tools for dealing with sustainability and land use conflicts (https://td-academy.org/en/events/international-summer-school-transdisciplinarity-2023”.

The aim of the summer school is to gain insight into the basics and challenges of transdisciplinary research and practice; that is a reflexive, integrative, method driven scientific principle aiming at the solution or transition of societal problems and concurrently of related scientific problems by differentiating and integrating knowledge from various scientific and societal bodies of knowledge and transferable to both the scientific and societal practice. Their programme includes:

• facilitating mutual understanding of societal problems through better observing and pursuing the situations faced (inter- and transdisciplinary exchange)
• empowering students with tools and methods for reflection and collaborative work in heterogeneous actor environments
• empowering students to contribute to solving community problems with their specific perspectives and knowledge
• reflecting on team building, actor constellations and power relations as well as possible impacts of solutions developed

In their article “Non-certified Experts, Stakeholders, Practitioners: What Participants Are Called Defines Transdisciplinarity”, of March 13 2018, published in  “Integration and Implementation Insights, A Community Blog and Repository of Resources for Improving Research Impact on Complex Real World Problems” (https://i2insights.org/2018/03/13/transdisciplinarity-participants/) Antonietta Di Giulio and Rico Defila refer to “non-certified experts” as “experience-based experts”. Even Defila R. and di Giulio A. (2015), in their article “Integrating knowledge: Challenges raised by the “Inventory of Synthesis” (Futures, 65: 123-135. Online (DOI): 10.1016/j.futures.2014.10.013) and Di Giulio A. and Defila R. (2017), in their article “Enabling university educators to equip students with inter- and transdisciplinary competencies. (International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 18, 5: 630-647. Online (DOI): 10.1108/IJSHE-02-2016-0030) had characterised non-certified experts as such.

For the purposes of this article, I will slightly modify definitions of stakeholders, Practitioners and Non-certified Experts given by Antonietta Di Giulio and Rico Defila (2018) thus:

Stakeholders: Broadly speaking a sociopolitical term defined as transdisciplinary research participants representing different interest groups some of which might be cultural identity groups, religious identity groups or political identity groups. Corporate identity groups, Nongovernmental Organization groups, State interest groups, Interstate Interest Groups, et cetera. Thus, a transdisciplinary project may be implicitly perceived to be a socio-political activity integrating different interests. Only those with socio-political interests are eligible to participate

Practitioners: This provides a particular link to the topic investigated in a project. Defining transdisciplinary research participants as “practitioners” presupposes that the topic investigated relates to a discernible field of praxis and that working in this field makes individuals or organisations eligible to participate in the research

Non-certified Experts: These are individuals and their expertise in the topic investigated in a transdisciplinary project.

Defining transdisciplinary research participants as non-certified experts implies that those participating are selected because they have an experience-based expertise complementing the (academically) certified expertise of researchers. Thus, a transdisciplinary project is perceived to be an activity integrating the worldviews, approaches and knowledge of different experts and producing new knowledge

We can say that transdisciplinary research involving academic experts, stakeholders, practitioners and non-certified experts widens knowledge, wisdom, understanding and insights in the research enterprise. Different actors integrate perspectives from different world views in their understanding of the problem and the solution collectively advanced. Via one spectrum of thinking and action.

This calls for advocacy towards the establishment of a transdisciplinary university or transdisciplinary universities. This is particularly important because we are beginning to take transboundary, challenges, problems and issues seriously. Such challenges, problems and issues cannot be meaningfully and effectively addressed by disciplinary academic experts.

They are often referred to as complex or wicked, and include those to do with refugees, climate change, population displacements, land grabbing, governance, environmental degradation, conservation, agriculture, health and education, to name but a few, Continuing to seek disciplinary solutions to them only complicates them and generates new ones for which we have no experience.

If we are talking of transformation of society through transformative education, then we cannot continue to ignore integration in higher education, let alone transformative transdisciplinary education, research and practice. It is getting too late for universities, particularly in Africa, to open up to the integrative team sciences in general and transdisciplinary team science in particular. However, better late than never.

• A Tell report / By Prof Oweyegha-Afunaduula, a former professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences of the Makerere University, Uganda