Headline: Curiosity-driven research

In the light of the major global crises such as pandemics, war, climate change and inequality, scientific research faces new challenges and targets. Scientific studies are supposed to provide background knowledge, to facilitate the desired transformation towards a sustainable future and to offer assistance for resolving complex problems that accompany societies in transition. Concepts such as transformative, transdisciplinary or co-creative research elucidate the direction in which scientific research finds its new role(s). Based on the discussion of these concepts and their different roots, the entry analyzes a new modular concept for a transdisciplinary scientific approach combining and integrating classic curiosity-driven research with goal oriented (advocacy) knowledge and catalytic, process-oriented expertise. In particular it emphasizes the role and function of curiosity-driven research for a comprehensive design of transdisciplinarity and transformative research. There is no doubt that society needs better transformative knowledge to facilitate actions towards sustainability but such knowledge rests on evidence-based insights from disciplinary and interdisciplinary research efforts. The entry provides an orientation of how this classic research outcomes can effectively be integrated into a transdisciplinary context.