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Many agree that addressing complex water problems requires interdisciplinary approaches. Yet, entrenched epistemic, methodological and institutional hierarchies often privilege technocratic and positivist framings over critical, reflexive and situated ways of knowing. As a result, interdisciplinary knowledge-making is often hesitant to explicitly engage with political questions and fails to expose or challenge the political, cultural and economic systems driving complex water problems. We argue that making interdisciplinary water knowledge more socially and environmentally transformative hinges on embracing critical social sciences and learning from non-Western epistemologies. This becomes possible when interdisciplinary knowledge-making is treated not as integration but as a weaving together and mediation of epistemic and methodological differences, where no discipline must conform to the definitions, frameworks or methods of others. Through collaborative learning processes that are grounded in care and reciprocity, difference can be harnessed as a transformative force for knowledge-making that supports action towards alternative development pathways and more just water futures.