Transnational challenges are pressing issues in any region. They transcend national borders and defy unilateral remedies. Multilateral efforts and capacity building remain fragmented. Regional efforts rarely bear fruit. As a result, despite two-decades of effort, transnational challenges cannot be understood and responded effectively. There has already been a growing call to rethink the existing approaches arguing for the need to understand the nature and scope of transnational challenges better, why the existing approaches and frameworks for cooperation, collaboration, and coordination do not work, and how they can be responded. Transnational challenges hit the Mediterranean particularly hard. Unilateral, multilateral, and regional responses to them in the region remain fragmented and ineffective. TRACHMED is a research and staff exchange programme intended to contribute to the global, regional, and national efforts of understanding and responding transnational challenges by conducting research in Mediterranean on three such issues: climate change, migration and forced displacement, and energy insecurity. It brings together an international, intersectoral, and interdisciplinary research team to 1) collect, interpret and process original empirical data on selected transnational challenges with a transnational perspective, 2) engage with the existing conceptual and theoretical debates and contribute to the conceptual and methodological approaches for studying, comprehending, and responding to transnational challenges, 3) develop and sustain a transnational network of researchers, practitioners, and institutions in the Mediterranean, thus increase the research capacity and shared knowledge and cooperation, 4) update scientific knowledge on these issues for relevant EU policies, political and economic actors interested or already working in the region, and to inform international organizations and decision-makers in the region.