Paulo Freire’s approach to research and learning incorporates ground-breaking principles for individual and social transformation. The idea of learning ‘to read and to write the world’ embraces the appropriation of the world through critical understanding, and a belonging to a world to which we inscribe ourselves. The contributions of this special issue explore the potential of Freire’s work for transformative inter- and transdisciplinary research. They address methodological questions and present selected methods that may inspire collaborative research in heterogeneous fields and team constellations. The authors draw on cases of conceptual work in interdisciplinary sustainability science, learning journeys in protected areas, systematization of experiences in agroecological peasant-research, research
through generative picturing with high school pupils and research based on theatre of the oppressed.