Building and Sustaining a Transnational and Interdisciplinary Research Group: Lessons Learned from a North American Experience

This paper examines the process of formation and development of a transnational and interdisciplinary research group, structure creation for collaboration, and agenda development for research programs. It uses network analysis results to demonstrate the evolution of the network, and describes the process as four stage development, from initiation, reaching agreement, advancing research to sustaining the research group. It discusses the challenges involved in transnational and interdisciplinary research collaboration, and examines contribution factors to the collaboration at each stage of the process.