About

We are a network of leaders fostering interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and education within and across organisations in the Oceania region.

Our mission is inspiring and supporting researchers to achieve transformational impact on global challenges by:

  • Fostering attention to grand challenges of particular significance to the Oceania region
  • Creating supportive environments and infrastructure
  • Developing effective metrics for excellence, impact and return on investment
  • Improving funding availability and outcomes
  • Supporting next generation organisational leaders
  • Providing effective career paths and role models for interdisciplinarians and transdisciplinarians at all levels, and especially to support early-career researchers
  • Developing workable transition pathways to implementation of new metrics and effective career paths.

We acknowledge and strive to incorporate the richness of multiple forms of knowledge and diverse cultural contexts within the Oceania region and beyond. We acknowledge the ancestral lands on which we work and pay our respects to Indigenous leaders past, present and emerging.

We define interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary organisations as those fostering research and/or education that integrates across disciplines to more comprehensively understand and support action on complex societal and environmental problems. Such research and education may also involve a) engaging with stakeholders, including decision makers and other research users and b) research implementation into policy and practice change.

Our network deliberately aims to include organisations that are very diverse in size, funding, structure and mission. Some have interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity as the core focus; for others interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and education sit alongside a wide range of discipline-based activities.

The inaugural meeting of the network took place in Brisbane, Australia in May 2019. It was attended by 19 leaders from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific. NITRO-Oceania is the first regional hub established by a global network of leaders in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary organisations.

We hold an annual business meeting to progress the aims of the network and have developed a strategic plan for 2023-25 (PDF 182KB).

We see ourselves as the nucleus of a growing network and invite other leaders in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary organisations in the Oceania region to join us.

NITRO Brisbane meeting March 2019
Attendees at the first meeting of leaders in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and education organisations in the Oceania region. Back row (L-R), Laurent Rivory, Mark Howden, Daniel Walker, Marcia Dwonczyk (facilitator), Stewart Lockie, Erika Techera, Ken Hughey, Stuart White; front two rows (L-R), Chalapan Kaluwin, Ken Taylor, Andrea Byrom, Derrick Armstrong, Gabriele Bammer, Brownwyn Harch, Jenny Dixon, Allanah Ryan, Louise McWhinnie, Nicky Grigg, Roger Robson-Williams, Paul Bertsch