The book with the subtitle “New pathways towards participative knowledge production through transnational and transcultural academic cooperation” is an ambitious undertaking. It documents 26 projects of the past programme phase with a wide variety of approaches to knowledge production relevant to development policy. It illustrates the diverse possibilities of transdisciplinary development research within the projects which were realized in 15 different countries.
The editor, Andreas J. Obrecht, encouraged the 105 authors – 46 female, 59 male – to investigate questions, problems and dimensions of knowledge production that are usually not addressed in research and project reports. Project planning, no matter how successful, can only partially anticipate the social reality of implementing a project. Flexibility, creativity and improvisation are indispensable prerequisites for successful project implementation in often difficult research conditions. Thus, this book is not only a documentation of the second phase of the Austrian Partnership Programme in Higher Education and Research for Development – APPEAR – but also a discursive contribution on practical approaches to transdisciplinary and transcultural knowledge production. In addition, the book includes hundreds of photos made in the context of the described projects and have been made available for publication in this book by the project leaders.