Dreaming as a Transdisciplinary Research Method
11th September 2026
What counts as knowledge, whose knowledge is valued, and how might opening research to different ways of knowing help us respond to complex societal and environmental challenges?
These are some of the questions explored by Project REPAIR researcher Professor Luci Attala in a newly published chapter examining transdisciplinary research and the potential of dreaming as an alternative research methodology.
Luci’s chapter, The Creative Complications and Challenges of UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES Transdisciplinary Research Method: Experiencing Dreaming as an Approach—My Story, has been published in the new open access Springer volume Bridging History and Policy: Essays on Resilience, Sustainability and Systems Modelling.
The chapter explores the transdisciplinary approach developed through UNESCO-MOST BRIDGES, which brings together different disciplines, communities and forms of expertise to address complex sustainability challenges. It argues that meaningful transdisciplinary research requires more than bringing different people into the same conversation. It also requires researchers to question established assumptions about expertise, evidence and whose perspectives are recognised as legitimate knowledge.
Drawing on a personal experience of dreaming, Luci considers how approaches that sit outside conventional academic research traditions might offer different forms of insight. The chapter particularly reflects on Indigenous understandings of dreams as sources of personal, collective and ancestral knowledge, using these ideas to challenge assumptions about how knowledge is produced and valued.
Central to the chapter is the importance of reflexivity. Luci argues that genuinely collaborative research asks participants to consider their own assumptions, identities and biases, and to recognise how these can influence the questions they ask, the methods they use and the knowledge they value. This process can help expose established hierarchies and create space for perspectives that may otherwise be overlooked.
Although the chapter was developed independently of Project REPAIR, its themes resonate strongly with the project’s own transdisciplinary approach. REPAIR brings together expertise across different academic disciplines and societal partners and asks how inclusive governance, shared ways of working and team convening can support transdisciplinary research.
These questions are particularly relevant as REPAIR explores biophilic living through multiple perspectives. Understanding cities, nature and human wellbeing requires more than one form of expertise. It means creating space for different disciplines, lived experiences, creative practices and ways of knowing, while remaining alert to the assumptions and blind spots that each perspective may bring.
Luci’s chapter provides a thought-provoking contribution to these wider conversations, inviting researchers to think differently about what knowledge can look like and how more inclusive and creative research practices might help us respond to complex challenges.
The chapter and the full open access book are available through Springer Nature.
Read Luci Attala’s chapter here:https://biophilic.wales/storage/app/media/uploaded-files/978-3-032-24379-9_8-1.pdf