On February 26th, we celebrated the launch of the working group “Engaged Philosophy and Ethics” with a workshop on Academic Activism. The lively discussion and strong interest in the group showed that there is real momentum for thinking about how to take philosophy from the seminar room into the messy realities it seeks to understand.
- Date
- Thursday 8 Oct 2026, 10:00 - 12:00
- Type
- General
- Spoken Language
- English
- Room
- Room Mandeville T3-05, Mandeville building, Erasmus University Rotterdam
We’re now happy to announce our second workshop, where we invite you to reflect on the role of philosophy (and philosophers) in transdisciplinary work.
What can philosophers actually contribute in transdisciplinary settings? How can we do this in a distinctly philosophical way? What do we have to offer for navigating the challenges of a messy world? And how can we, at the same time, navigate the messiness of academia while striving for genuinely good transdisciplinary collaboration?
To kick off the discussion, David Ludwig will give a talk on:
Transdisciplinary Philosophy: Empirical and Philosophical Methods for Navigating a Messy World
Abstract: Socio-ecological challenges such as biodiversity loss, climate change, digital transformation, and public health demand interdisciplinary collaborations but also the inclusion of diverse non-academic actors including farmers, Indigenous communities, medical practitioners, policy makers, and teachers. Transdisciplinary methods promise to bring diverse actors and knowledge systems together in addressing complex problems but also create tensions between heterogeneous epistemologies, ontologies, and values. Based on the recently published Open Access monograph Transformative Transdisciplinarity. An Introduction to Community-Based Philosophy, this talk outlines philosophical methods for navigating tensions in transdisciplinary practice that build on traditions of “empirically engaged philosophy” while expanding them through novel forms of “publicly engaged philosophy”.
David Ludwig is a philosopher and transdisciplinary researcher at Wageningen University Wageningen University and Research (WUR), where he is the chair of the Knowledge, Technology, and Innovation (KTI) Group. He is also a Principal Investigator of the Global Epistemologies and Ontologies (GEOS) project that investigates foundational questions of action research and community-based science. Recent books include: Transformative Transdisciplinarity. An Introduction to Community-Based Philosophy, 2025, Oxford University Press. Global Epistemologies and Philosophies of Science, 2021, Routledge. The Politics of Knowledge in Inclusive Development and Innovation, 2021, Routledge.
We warmly invite you to join us, think with us, and explore what engaged, transdisciplinary philosophy can look like in practice.
- More information
Hosted by the Erasmus School of Philosophy and DRIFT (Dutch Research Institute for Transition Research).
