Establishing science-society networks for transdisciplinary teaching in higher education: The case of Albania and Kosovo

The two Western Balkan countries Albania and Kosovo are in a phase of economic, social and environmental transformation for many years. This implies tremendous sustainability challenges such as air pollution, insufficient waste management and rural-urban migration tendencies. A lot of local stakeholder groups and civil society actors are searching for ways to tackle this situation. A new coalition between higher education institutions, society, and especially businesses can play a key role when developing transdisciplinary collaboration for education, training and knowledge exchange. This paper tries to argue about the role of transdisciplinarity in higher education in terms of networks as frameworks to develop long-term and impactful collaboration between science and society. The discussion is based on the results of the EU-funded TEMPUS project ConSus (Connecting science-society collaboration for sustainability innovations) where partner institutions from Albania, Kosovo and three EU countries are establishing a regional transdisciplinary network for sustainable development. Therefore, the network’s statutes framework will be presented. It will be the basis for a discussion of possible opportunities and challenges when establishing such a network. As a result, the authors point out that regional transdisciplinary networks are of great importance in order to significantly tackle sustainability challenges. This is necessary when it comes to establish collaboration efficiently and to raise awareness within society as well as to propose and apply joint sustainability solutions.