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TRAINING (2.5.1)
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This Guide supports research partners to develop ethically sound, efficient and effective partnerships.

Bild: NASA

Transformation Research: Research of or for Transformation

November, 2025
By Amenra Blamo and Fabian Käser

A joint research can seek to understand a topic, issue, or transformation, or it can aim to actively contribute to change. The kind of knowledge produced and the researcher’s role differs accordingly to practicing transfromation research or transformative research.

Transformation research descriptively and analytically explores the conditions under which transformations occur. It studies societal change to understand the design and practical implications and focuses on conditions, mechanisms, systems knowledge, and target knowledge.

Transformative research aims to actively engage in a transformation process, often together with other actors. It seeks to change society by initiating transformation and producing knowledge about that change. The goal of the researchers is a direct impact, oftentimes in continuity with systems knowledge from transformation research. A common approach to describe the pathway towards an intended transformation is thorugh a theory of change.

Global research partnerships often include both, research of and research for transformation.

January 2026
By Sierra Deutsch

Recognizing that today’s global crises of the climate, biodiversity, pollution, political instability, social inequality (and more) not only reinforce each other but ultimately share the same root causes, many experts have taken to referring to these crises collectively as the 'polycrisis.' To address this polycrisis then, many of these experts are increasingly calling for ‘transformative change,’ defined as “a process that involves fundamental, system-wide shifts in views (ways of seeing, thinking and knowing), structures (ways of organizing, regulating and governing), and practices (ways of doing, behaving and relating)” (IPBES, 2024, p. XXVII). Transformative change as defined here is therefore transformative research that explicitly seeks a more just and sustainable world through a significant and substantial societal paradigm shift.

References:

three types of knowledge
three types of knowledge
three types of knowledgeBild: Flurina Schneider und New Media Center Basel
Bild: Flurina Schneider und New Media Center Basel

A common approach to structure knowledge of or for transformation distinguishes between three types of knowledge:

  • Systems knowledge: understanding systemic processes
  • Target knowledge: understanding towards where transformation shall go
  • Transformation knowledge: how to go there.

Further resources:

Tools:

Further resoruces:
SCNAT knowledge: Transformation research & transformative research

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