Building Relationships — Thinking in Relationships: Reflections from Our ITD Workshops in Lausanne
- mirjamsteiger
- 13 minutes ago
- 3 min read
The Swiss Conference on Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD-CH 25)
On November 19, 2025, our Translating Transformations team had the pleasure of hosting two identical workshops at the Swiss Conference on Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD-CH 25) at the University of Lausanne. Organized by td-net, Switzerland’s Network for Transdisciplinary Research, the conference gathered around 90 participants from across Switzerland—researchers, practitioners, and others committed to the possibilities of transdisciplinary work. The day began with two inspiring keynotes that highlighted the essence of transdisciplinary work: building bridges between academic knowledge and practical, local experience.
Our Workshop: Making Power Visible
After the keynote session, participants dispersed into parallel 45-minute workshops—one of which was ours: “Making power visible: Deepening relationships through the use of critical social science tools.”
We hosted the workshop twice—once in the morning with 15 participants and again in the afternoon with 14 participants. Together, Sierra, Jinat, and Mirjam guided participants through two of our shortest tools that we could fit in the 45-minute slot:
The Power of Truth
The Power of Representation
In line with the conference theme “Building relationships, thinking in relationships,” our aim was to create space for reflexivity—asking who holds power, how it operates, and how identity and knowledge shape collaboration.
Workshop session on Making Power Visible, Photos by Johan Nöthiger
What We Learned: Insights from Participants
In the first part of the workshop, we worked with the Power of Truth tool—also known as the “W-Tool.” A recurring challenge is ensuring that participants follow the instructions exactly, which is essential for the exercise to reveal how power operates. One of the key insights of this tool is that, during the exercise, the “drawer” temporarily becomes the truth-maker: their perspective or drawing intention is assigned authority, and the group experiences how perspective can be translated to “truth.” This effect only becomes visible when everyone pays close attention to what the drawer is doing. Our takeaway for future workshops is to provide even clearer guidance to ensure the structure of the exercise supports the learning experience.
If you’re new to this tool or want to revisit it, you can find the Power of Truth exercise here.
In the second half of the workshop, we introduced the Power of Representation tool. Participants shared that the exercise made them feel genuinely listened to, and several said they plan to use it in their own collaborations—exactly our intention in offering open-access tools.
A rich discussion emerged around how power is also embedded in tools, toolkitting, and concepts like “literacy.” We are very grateful for this important conversation and it’s something we will continue refecting on within our team. One participant highlighted that neurodivergent individuals (e.g., ADHD, autistic, highly sensitive people) and others with diverse communication styles may not engage in “active listening” according to neurotypical norms such as eye contact, nodding, stillness, or rapid responses.
Based on this feedback, future workshops will explicitly invite participants to choose the listening style that feels most comfortable for them—whether that means looking down, drawing, listening without emotional mirroring, or keeping the camera off in an online setting. Our aim is not to prescribe one way of listening, but to support reflection on how representation (and non-representation) shapes whose perspectives are valued.
If you’d like to explore the tool yourself, you can find the Power of Representation here.
Looking Ahead
The reflections and feedback we received were deeply valuable and will continue to inform our tool development.
We are currently working on new tools that will be tested on February 6 in Zürich—with more information coming soon on LinkedIn.