Navigating Borderlands: A Transnational Duoethnography of Multidisciplinary Faculty Partnership

This duoethnography examines how two transnational scholars—one in Education and one in Public Administration—navigated a multidisciplinary research partnership with other colleagues from Education and Environmental Science at a southeastern US public university. Guided by critical transnationalism and epistemic borderlands theory, we ask: How do we, as two transnational scholars, make sense of the intersection, epistemic friction, and complementarity among the worldviews of Education, Public Administration, and Environmental Science within a shared multidisciplinary collaboration? We conducted a dialogic session to reflect critically on our collaborative experience, then analyzed the data through reflexive thematic analysis. Insights show, first, that epistemic friction—evidenced in differing methodological preferences, writing styles, and disciplinary practices—did not require resolution. Instead, it created space for productive negotiation through translation, reflexivity, and shared commitment to collective goals, enabling epistemic reorientation. Second, institutional isolation and departmental silos contributed to initial hesitancy toward the collaboration; however, our partnership demonstrated how transnational faculty can actively renegotiate institutional boundaries. Against this background, the study contributes empirically to the literature on multidisciplinary research and practice by identifying dispositions and micro-practices that convert epistemic friction into integrative outcomes. Conceptually, it offers translation as a mechanism for navigating disciplinary and institutional borderlands. Implications suggest that institutions must move beyond symbolic gestures of support toward material investments for multidisciplinary research and practices—including workload recognition, psychological safety, and cross-campus facilitation. Such infrastructure will help sustain multidisciplinary partnerships, particularly for transnational scholars on the tenure track.