CRCs and Transdisciplinary Research: What are the Implications for Science?

Abstract A number of authors have recently proposed a future for science where the traditional academic mode of knowledge production, primarily organised on disciplinary lines, is largely replaced by a different mode of knowledge production that is more transient in its organisational forms. If correct, the new mode of knowledge production has implications for the research cultures of universities, government research institutes, or industrial laboratories. But in particular, the trend has implications for research arrangements, such as Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs), because the CRCs seek to integrate, yet maintain, many of the characteristics of each sector that are likely to be significantly transformed by this new mode of knowledge production. Further, the CRCs themselves already reflect the salient characteristics proposed by this new mode of knowledge. It is therefore important to consider the impact that CRCs are having on the culture of science itself.