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Research framed to address global, grand and societal challenges has brought fresh impetus to calls by funding agencies for transdisciplinary research. Yet the urgency of such calls is not matched by sufficient knowledge of how to foster and maintain the capabilities to do transdisciplinary work. Significant gaps exist in how to cultivate and maintain transdisciplinary methods, practices and the underlying capabilities required to support them. This paper employs a capability approach to construct a realist evaluative framework with which to assess such capabilities. The framework is operationalised through a novel three-stage mixed method procedure which seeks to evaluate transdisciplinary capabilities as they are valued and experienced by researchers themselves. The procedure is tested on a portfolio of five 'pump-priming' projects funded by the ESRC Nexus Network +.The paper reports a set of transdisciplinary capabilities valued by nexus research participants and found to varying degrees within each of the research projects. We find that pump-priming investments are sites of research capability development in three ways; through convening cognitive capabilities; cultivating transgressive capabilities; and maintaining backstage capabilities over durations that extend beyond the beginning and end of individual projects. Furthermore, for researchers, it is the transgressive quality of these capabilities that is most salient. Directing greater attention to these different modes of capability development in pump-priming research programmes may be useful in growing and steering research system capacity towards contemporary and future societal needs.

Problems framed as societal challenges have provided fresh impetus for transdisciplinary research. In response, funders have started programmes aimed at increasing transdisciplinary research capacity. However, current programme evaluations do not adequately measure the skills and characteristics of individuals and collectives doing this research. Addressing this gap, we propose a systematic framework for evaluating transdisciplinary research based on the Capability Approach, a set of concepts designed to assess practices, institutions, and people based on public values. The framework is operationalized through a mixed-method procedure which evaluates capabilities as they are valued and experienced by researchers themselves. The procedure is tested on a portfolio of ‘pump-priming’ research projects in the UK. We find these projects are sites of capability development in three ways: through convening cognitive capabilities required for academic practice; cultivating informal tacit capabilities; and maintaining often unacknowledged backstage capabilities over durations that extend beyond the lifetime of individual projects. Directing greater attention to these different modes of capability development in transdisciplinary research programmes may be useful formatively in identifying areas for ongoing project support, and also in steering research system capacity towards societal needs.

Concerns that biological weapons will be used has focused attention on the need to develop a capability to independently investigate any allegation of use. The United Nations Secretary-General's Mechanism is one such tool, and efforts to revitalize and strengthen it have acknowledged a wide range of technical difficulties to overcome. This article emphasizes another aspect of the investigatory process: communicating the findings of an investigation. The article frames the investigation report as more than a technical recounting of what the investigators did and found, regarding it instead as the means by which the policymaking audience "makes sense" of the allegation. Drawing on literatures associated with science policy and "boundary objects," the article reflects on the guidance provided thus far and suggests there has been an implicit move toward seeing the reports as "boundary documents." The suggestion made here is that this implicit recognition should be now made explicit so that the critical position of the report is better appreciated. This has implications for the training of rostered experts.

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