PIONEER Training School 2026

In this Pioneer Training School, you will step beyond traditional academic boundaries and work hands-on with a real-world challenge linked to SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. An on-going urban redevelopment project in Den Bosch provides the shared empirical ground for the training school. You’ll engage directly with stakeholders, explore multiple perspectives, and practice working in real contexts where uncertainty and creativity go hand in hand.

Throughout the week, you will develop the core transdisciplinary skills that future-proof your research career: collaboration across sectors, perspective-taking, participatory research methods, creative inquiry, and impact-driven thinking. Drawing on established frameworks for transdisciplinary research, the school combines methodological training with critical reflection on the conditions under which research produces genuine societal impact.

We also examine the role of AI or Digital Systems in transdisciplinary research – not as a neutral tool, but as a set of sociotechnical system with specific political and ethical implications. Participants will explore both the potentials and limits of AI in supporting stakeholder engagement and knowledge co-production, with attention to issues of data governance, science communication and justice.

Finally, this training school strengthens one of your most important assets as an early career researcher: your international and community network. Trust and long-lasting relationships are constitutive of collaborative research; also, they help engage stakeholders within your research project. Networking skills, internationally, interculturally and interpersonally, are an important skill to develop as an early career researcher. In this training school, we dedicate time to train these skills and build your network internationally, but also within your local communities.