Through dialogue to new knowledge: transdisciplinary stakeholder engagement

On 25–26 November 2025, around 20 participants from the Helmholtz Research Field Earth & Environment met at the Helmholtz head office in Berlin for two days of intensive discussion on transdisciplinary work and effective stakeholder engagement. The Helmholtz Centres AWI, GEOMAR, Hereon, GFZ and KIT were represented, among them colleagues from the Climate Service Center Germany GERICS (Hereon), the Research Institute for Sustainability RIFS (GFZ) and the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity HIFMB (AWI/University of Oldenburg). The workshop was organised by Helmholtz SynCom and led by Dr Sabine Hafner (KlimaKom), who had designed it together with Dr Mechtild Agreiter from KIT and Dr Katharina Sielemann from SynCom. It built on previous SynCom activities on societal impact and science–policy dialogues, this time focusing on the joint design of stakeholder processes in the Helmholtz research field Earth & Environment.

The first day began with a shared stocktaking: what does “stakeholder engagement in science” actually mean in concrete terms – and how does a transdisciplinary approach differ from the more traditional idea of “using” research results at the end of a project? In an introductory talk, Sabine Hafner clarified key concepts and underlined that transdisciplinary knowledge production is more than involving stakeholders “at the end”. The aim is to develop problem framings, visions and options for action jointly with partners from politics, public administration, business and civil society.

Participants then reflected on their own experiences, ranging from participatory processes in coastal regions and heat in cities to biodiversity and climate adaptation projects. It quickly became clear how many different entry points there are for stakeholder engagement in the Earth & Environment field – and how much this diversity creates a need for orientation, exchange and professional formats. Many participants stressed how challenging it is to involve actors from administration, politics, business, and civil society at an early stage – and how much they miss spaces for genuine “deeper exchange”, where the goal is not just to present results but to think together.

The first working phase built on this: what societal changes do we actually want our research to help bring about? And who needs to be at the table for that to happen? Participants sketched out their topics, identified key stakeholders and discussed which “spaces for collaboration” they would need – from jointly writing a project proposal (co-writing) to co-evaluating a research project together. Again and again, the desire came up to see research more strongly as a co-design and co-creation process rather than just a sequence of mutual result updates.

An input on stakeholder analysis and stakeholder management helped to structure these reflections: how can we avoid only addressing the “usual suspects”? How do we deal with very different logics, timeframes and expectations? In small groups, concrete pictures of future projects emerged – including stakeholder maps, ideas for communication strategies beyond academia, and the question of how to anchor transdisciplinary collaboration with real societal impact in the day-to-day life of a project without reducing it to a mere exercise in metrics.

A highlight of the first day was the keynote by Dirk von Schneidemesser (RIFS/GFZ) entitled “Designing stakeholder processes”. Drawing on his own experience, he showed how much depends on what at first glance looks like detail: who is invited, when and how; how transparent the goals and rules of the process are; and which forms of participation are actually offered – listening, speaking, deciding together. He also pointed to the importance of using the language of the relevant stakeholder groups themselves (for example “prevention work” instead of “accident avoidance” in the police context, or “expert advisors” instead of “researchers” in the German Bundestag). His talk encouraged participants to see stakeholder processes as spaces for learning that can be actively shaped, rather than as a box-ticking exercise that “also has to get done somehow”.

The second day started with an overview of the different roles researchers can take on in such processes. Many participants recognised themselves first and foremost in the role of (supposedly) neutral expert or honest broker, but increasingly also experience themselves as moderators, translators or bridge-builders between very different worlds. Particular attention was paid to societal moods and narratives that play into research, to forms of stakeholder fatigue (“yet another workshop…”) and to the question of how research can contribute to democratic decision-making while remaining oriented towards the common good.

Another working phase focused on the skills researchers need for all this. Among those mentioned were moderation and mediation, a basic understanding of administrative and policy processes, experience with communication beyond the scientific community, and sensitivity to power relations and the different “currencies and languages of stakeholder groups”.

The workshop results were then linked with participant feedback. Several participants highlighted the strong practical orientation and the focused group work; as one put it, the “keynote by Dirk von Schneidemesser and the concentrated atmosphere” were particular strengths. Another participant valued the space for interaction and dialogue with colleagues from other Centres.

In closing, it became clear that stakeholder processes are, above all, about building and maintaining relationships. They require time, reliability and institutional backing – in the form of resources, recognition and appropriate structures within the Centres. Participants expressed a strong interest in continuing the exchange started here, for example through further SynCom workshops, formats for co-designing projects, or events in which methods are not only presented but tried out together. In addition, the group developed a proposal for how stakeholder engagement could be institutionalised in Helmholtz research (PoF V) beyond third-party-funded projects.