“People aren’t mealies” – Professor Rosenberg explains why complex problems demand a transdisciplinary approach

By Siqhamo Jama

 

When Professor Eureta Rosenberg, Dean of Education at Rhodes University, stepped up to deliver her inaugural lecture, she was quick to point out it was eight years late. But the delay only made her message more urgent.

“The challenges we face as humanity do not observe any disciplinary boundaries,” she told the audience. “Solutions lie at the interface of various disciplines.”

It’s a deceptively simple idea – but one that has shaped Prof Rosenberg’s decades-long career and placed Rhodes University at the forefront of a new kind of research. Known as transdisciplinary scholarship, this approach brings together experts from different fields – scientists, educators, economists, community leaders, and others – to solve real-world problems that are too big and too messy for any one discipline or group to tackle alone.

And the problems are big. Climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity loss, education reform, and sustainable economic growth, for instance, do not respect the neat categories of academia. As Prof Rosenberg reminded her listeners, “The solutions lie where those categories overlap.”

A home for out-of-the-box thinking

Rhodes University has quietly become a hub for this kind of thinking. Its Environmental Learning Research Centre (ELRC) in the Education Faculty, where Prof Rosenberg has spent much of her career, is a meeting place for diverse minds: environmental scientists working alongside learning specialists, curriculum designers alongside activists, artists alongside journalists.

It’s a rare and valuable environment. “Some of us want to integrate between economics and education. Between biochemistry and community engagement. Between journalism and art,” Prof Rosenberg said. “There are many such scholars at Rhodes University – perhaps more than at most other universities.”

The results speak for themselves. From tackling water pollution with participatory action research, to rethinking training for South Africa’s green economy, to evaluating skills needs in coal-mining towns, the work emerging from Rhodes University is firmly grounded in the real world – and designed to make a tangible difference.

People are not mealies

One of Prof Rosenberg’s more vivid metaphors drew knowing laughter from the audience: “You can’t treat people like a field of mealies.”

She was speaking about evaluation – the process of measuring the impact of programmes and interventions. Too often, she argued, social and educational initiatives are assessed with the same blunt tools used for agricultural yields: input here, output there, growth measured as if learners are planted in uniform rows.

But human lives, communities, and social change don’t follow that pattern. Rhodes University researchers, Prof Rosenberg explained, have pioneered methods that respect complexity – combining quantitative data with participatory processes, reflective workshops, and deep contextual analysis. The result isn’t just a better understanding of what works; it’s a stronger foundation for scaling up solutions in a way that truly benefits people and the environment.

Fuel for the future

This commitment to working across disciplines isn’t just an academic preference – it’s becoming a global imperative. Many of today’s most forward-thinking funders are explicitly seeking transdisciplinary research. They know that problems like climate resilience, an inclusive energy transition, and sustainable urban planning require more than technical fixes; they demand collaboration between scientists, policymakers, industry, and communities.

The challenge, Prof Rosenberg noted, is that while funding bodies may call for this kind of work, many universities still lack the internal systems to support it fully. Traditional metrics – like discipline-based journal rankings or narrowly focused grant criteria – can unintentionally disadvantage researchers who are building solutions across boundaries.

That’s where Rhodes University stands out. As a smaller university with an unusually collaborative culture, it’s able to offer a home to scholars working in this intersectional space. But to truly unlock the potential of this work, it needs the resources to match its vision.

Prof Rosenberg’s career offers a case study in why such investment matters. Her projects have ranged from shaping South Africa’s national Human Capital Development Strategy for the Biodiversity Sector, to assessing the competencies needed for a greener economy, to contributing to international collaborations like the TRANSECTS project, which examines how institutions can better support cross-disciplinary research.

In each case, the work has bridged the gap between theory and practice. A strategy document leads to new training programmes; a skills assessment reshapes industry hiring priorities; an evaluation framework helps a community programme improve its impact.

This is not research for research’s sake. It’s research as a lever for social and environmental progress – exactly the kind of work that can transform communities, industries, and policies when given the right backing.

A call to think – and act – bigger

In closing her lecture, Prof Rosenberg issued a challenge to her peers: strengthen the quality and rigour of transdisciplinary research, and push institutions to recognise and reward it. Her message was equally relevant to those beyond academia – to the funders, policymakers, and community leaders who care about creating a better future.

The problems we face are too urgent, too interconnected, and too complex to be solved in isolation. If we want solutions that last, we need to invest in people, in ideas, and in the spaces where disciplines meet.

At Rhodes University, those spaces already exist. They are classrooms, labs, and field sites where environmental scientists work with educators, economists with artists, and communities with researchers. They are the places where the next generation of problem-solvers is learning not just what to think, but how to think – across boundaries, and for the common good.

Because the truth is simple, if not easy: humanity’s greatest challenges will not wait for us to work within our comfort zones. The future belongs to those willing to work at the intersections.