Complex societal challenges, such as decarbonising transport systems and redesigning energy infrastructures, rarely respect disciplinary boundaries. They require the knowledge of various disciplines such as engineering, economics, public policy, and the social sciences.

Moreover, scientific knowledge alone is often insufficient for addressing ‘real-world’ problems. Practical, experiential and local knowledge captures contextual factors, feasibility constraints and normative trade-offs that purely academic analysis can overlook. The people who hold these various forms of knowledge include utility operators, transport planners, municipal administrations, businesses and infrastructure users. Transdisciplinary approaches facilitate such dialogues between scientific expertise and the knowledge of stakeholders.

This workshop is designed for lecturers and researchers who wish to get insights into the conceptual and methodological tools required to design and implement such collaborative projects. The special focus of the workshop is on combining and integrating scientific and practise-based knowledge.

Combining and integrating the diverse forms of relevant knowledge is challenging but it can improve the relevance, legitimacy and implementability of research findings. It requires building trust across disciplines and with practice partners, developing a shared language and jointly agreed methods, and investing time to reconcile differing standards of evidence and differing expectations of what counts as a valid result.

The energy-mobility nexus is a paradigmatic case in point. This concept represents the growing interdependence between energy and mobility systems, which is driven by electrification, digitalisation, and changing urban infrastructure. Decisions in one area (e.g. electric vehicle adoption) directly influence opportunities in the other area (e.g. electricity grid capacity), and effective solutions require coordinated technical, economic, social and institutional knowledge.

Almaty provides an ideal setting in which to explore this issue in practice. As Kazakhstan’s largest city, it is confronted with urgent issues such as air quality, the modernisation of public transport, the electrification of vehicle fleets, and the future role of renewable energy in the regional energy landscape. Local stakeholders, including the municipal authorities, energy utilities, transport operators and energy consumers, provide a valuable opportunity to apply and test tools for integrating knowledge.