[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Mapping Complexity: What Can Mental Models do for Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research in Agri-Food Systems?

## Details

**Authors** Zingeser, Jacob Alexander

**Year** 2026

**Publisher** Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, Faculty of Life Sciences, Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences (master's thesis)

**Kind of work** thesis

**Discipline** Agriculture & Food

**Secondary disciplines** Environment & Sustainability, Systems Science

**Kind of engagement** scholarly

**Applied** false

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.18452/36845) 
10.18452/36845

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

The author sets out to ask what mental models can do for inter- and transdisciplinary research in agri-food systems, and whether co-created cognitive maps can surface and foster systems thinking among researchers and practitioners working across disciplines.

### Who or what was studied (sample)

Ten mental models co-created in one-on-one video interviews with researchers and practitioners from three European inter- and transdisciplinary projects, AgroecologyTRANSECT, CHORIZO, and ENFASYS, preceded by two reflective interviews that informed the design.

### How they did it (methods)

A qualitative, interpretivist study. Maps were drawn collaboratively in Mural during interviews and verified by participants, then analyzed by deductive and inductive thematic coding, with the deductive codes targeting distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives. The results chapter is organized to follow the logic of the DSRP approach, and a figure illustrating what a system is, using the DSRP framework and adapted from Midgley (2024), is used to interpret the maps.

### What they found (results)

The author reports that mental models display varying degrees of systems thinking; that participants converge on the problems facing agri-food systems but diverge on how to progress toward sustainability; that more precise distinctions correlated with more relationships and greater complexity; and that nine of the ten models captured non-linear relationships. He concludes that mental models can foster systems thinking and help bridge disciplinary viewpoints, particularly with skilled facilitation and when introduced early in project planning.

## Commentary

### In short

A Humboldt-Universitat master's thesis that uses DSRP as its deductive coding scheme and as the organizing structure of its results, analyzing ten co-created mental models from three European agri-food research projects.

### In more detail

Zingeser introduces DSRP in his framework chapter as four cognitive skills that function as rules by which systems thinking takes place, attributing the theory to Cabrera and Cabrera (2019), and he devotes a subsection to each pattern. Distinctions are grounded in the 2008 formulation that naming something creates a boundary between it and everything it is not. Relationships carry a caution he takes from Cabrera and Cabrera that correlation should not be mistaken for causality, which he calls a common error among systems thinkers. In the results he draws on the claim that ideas can be parts and wholes at once to interpret how participants nested concepts in their maps. The framework then becomes method. The deductive half of the coding scheme targets distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives, and the results chapter is explicitly structured to follow the logic of the DSRP approach, with the author noting at one point that his findings exemplify the interplay between the skills rather than their separate operation. A figure illustrating what a system is in DSRP terms serves as the reference against which the ten maps are read. The reported correlation between more precise distinctions and more relationships and complexity in a map is the thesis's most direct empirical claim about the patterns, and the finding that nine of ten maps captured non-linear relationships is offered as evidence that practitioners represent complexity even when untrained in doing so. One feature of the transmission is worth recording: the DSRP diagram reaches the thesis adapted from Midgley (2024) rather than from the Cabreras directly.

### Response

The thesis uses the four patterns the way a coding scheme should be used, as categories that observations fall into rather than as labels applied after the fact, and the choice to structure the results by pattern makes the analysis checkable against the maps. Zingeser also states the theory correctly on the point most often garbled in applied work: he presents the patterns as interacting rather than sequential, and his observation that his findings exemplify the interplay between the skills is what the theory predicts. His finding that maps with more precise distinctions also carried more relationships and more complexity is a small piece of independent evidence for the claim that the patterns co-occur rather than operating in isolation, though with ten maps it is descriptive rather than inferential. The secondhand figure is worth flagging for anyone tracing how DSRP travels: the diagram is adapted from Midgley (2024), so the visual representation of the theory arrives through an intermediary even though the textual account is cited to the primary sources.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

Shows it makes a difference

**Added** 2026-10-22

**How to cite this** Zingeser, Jacob Alexander (2026). Mapping Complexity: What Can Mental Models do for Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research in Agri-Food Systems?. Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, Faculty of Life Sciences, Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute of Agricultural and Horticultural Sciences (master's thesis).