Building transdisciplinary bridges for sustainable Svalbard and Arctic development

In a series of two workshops, we intend to create a forum for discussing and initiating transdisciplinary research for sustainable development on Svalbard. The workshops will be a meeting place for national and international researchers and local and national stakeholders to jointly discuss the opportunities for and initiating transdisciplinary collaboration. This will create bridges across scientific disciplines and stakeholders . In the first workshop, a side event meeting to the SSC 2023, we will bring together natural and social scientists in the Svalbard research community and stakeholders from outside of academia. The aim is to facilitate a discussion of how to work together across disciplinary and institutional boundaries to co-produce the knowledge we need to address the complex problems facing Svalbard in the Anthropocene. In the second workshop, at the Arctic Congress Bodø 2024, representatives from various disciplines and stakeholders (local, national and international) will come together to discuss avenues for transdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation with the broader Arctic social science and stakeholder community to address sustainable development options. The forum will be formalized with the appointment of an interim steering committee and a working group that will take on the task of defining the concrete action points for further collaboration.