Dear Jurgen

This issue is at the heart of debates on academic literacy in the post modern era. indeed, It has become urgent to look critically at the belief of some academics that they can continue to be functional in their isolation. It seems that nobody can operate properly behind closed doors and within a small community of same-discipline researchers. How to end these practices and open the boundaries? Perhaps the first step should be through working on the mentality of the young learners to develop a new generation that believes in interdisciplinarity as a vital component of completing one's academic literacy. This might be done through increasing cross-disciplinary subjects in every department so that students of various disciplines interact together and exchange knowledge and skills. knowing that the major concern of concervative academics to this approach is the risk of thinning the researchers by scattering their efforts, it would be very important to work on guaranteeing  the quality of the studies.

Another handicap in front of interdisciplinarity would be the negative opinion of some recruitment juries in academia as well as in the professional settings. It would be interesting to convince decision makers of the importance of interdisciplinarity in order to change the laws or regulations governing these events.

I hope this was helpful

Best regards  

There is probably no right answer here. My degree is a Doctor of Arts in Political Science. Though almost exclusively political science courses I was required 18 credits of interdisciplinary coursework. Also I was required 9 credits of actual interdisciplinary seminars, like political psychology. If your degree is already in hand, and you probably don't want to go back to school for another degree or even a certificate, I say read. A simple solution to a complex problem. I'm sure any discipline, like mine, has at least a tangential relationship with other disciplines. Look for overlap in research methodology and topics. Read related articles to your research agenda published in journals outside of your discipline and you will be on your way. Next step is to integrate that knowledge and literature into your own research.

One undervalued way to overcome those boundaries is the current move toward Citizen Science & Community-Based Research. When citizens are really involved as research stakeholders, it clearly becomes necessary to collaborate with other disciplines...

involvement from the different stakeholders should be the key. encouraging the set up of interdisciplinary faculty and centers would also facilitate.

There is need of more research and clarity on this issue. We need to think in both direction and understand the benefits. There are new ideas are coming up in academia but the relevance of such ideas for future are also important.   

Colleagues, I think with the increasing diversity among our student population (differently abled, international, culturally diverse, gender differences, technology savvy etc.), the interdisciplinarity would be a natural progression to help us to better understand and accommodate for such diversity. In addition, interdisciplinarity would help to reduce costs in avoiding duplication as students can take courses in other faculties that have that specialty without individual departments offering the same course. I have attached the linked article that illuminates the need for accommodating such diversity that I hope would useful to this discussion.

many thanks,

Debra

Data Curriculum Inclusiveness Challenge: Responding to Multicultu...

Article Cultural Sensitivity Needed in Online Discussion Rubric Language

I attended the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, which made my PhD experience interdisciplinary. Maxwell is the school of social sciences and faculty are tenured in the traditional departments, economics, political science, and sociology for example. However, most are not housed in departments. Rather, they are organized by interest. For instance, the research center that I was housed in as a doctoral student, because of my interests, included a mixed faculty that included historians, political scientists, economists, and an econometrician, to name a few. Similarly, doctoral seminars were frequently organized by faculty from different disciplines and doctoral students from any discipline could participate. In my view, this is probably the only way to achieve true interdisciplinary collaboration. However, I have never been at another university where this model was so pervasive.

I feel Thomas Kuhn perhaps described this behavioral phenomena best in his famous essay, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." I couldn't agree more that this challenge does indeed exist, and pervasively so across academia. But I have personally found it effective to cross lines and join forces by appealing to the extant reward system usually found in such institutions -- that of joint research efforts leading to publications. These benefit the authors for tenure, academic contributions for accreditation,, etc. Truly, the institution must value the interdisciplinary product, but this is not near as big an obstacle as taking the first step of outreach across the campus for proposal development --  or even better, having the research funds already in place to invite outside participation. In short, the answer (at least locally) may simply be leadership .

Collaboration is encouraged or discouraged depending on how the research is framed, whether as a question (for instance in public policy with an external audience in mind) or project (that requires a concentration within a particular disciplinary tradition). The disciplines operate at different levels, from a subject matter/ methodology split, to a span of debate. It may be that cross disciplinary interaction may advance a project (in Kuhnian sense); but the same impetus may also be reached within the original tradition. Teaching multi-disicplinarity strikes me as a mistake; my confidence as a researcher comes from skills learnt in mastering a discipline, even if I am working outside that environment..

This seems to me to be both an internal and external issue.  We need to promote greater inter-disciplinary collaboration within the university, and outside it.  It is certainly true that faculties and schools need to do more work together, whether that's research and innovation or just sharing teaching.  I've just spent the morning at a business networking event where it became clear that the gap between our two worlds does not seem to be closing.  Those in business can offer so much to students, and to the lecturing/research staff, in terms of helping students reach a better understanding about what is required in the workplace and academics can work with businesses to gain new insights and advance new areas of research.  Interdisciplinary links and collaboration are close to my heart as I believe it is by doing so that we grow as academics, institutions, researchers and citizens.

Dear Jurgen, At the methodological level you can find an inspiration in the book by Allen Repko "Interdisciplinary Research. process and Theory". It is very practical work on how to build bridges across different disciplines and combine insight from different branches of science (not only social science but also history, biology, geology, engeenering, etc).

This is a challenge for everyone.  Aside from academics themselves, there is an important role for both research funders and publishers in incentivising multidisciplinarity.  Elsevier, the publisher, have been developing a system for rating the multidisciplinarity of submitted articles.  Research funders have a role through making it clear that multidisciplinary applications for funding will be looked upon favourably.  Likewise, infrastructure funders such as governments and universities should be encouraging and/or funding multidisciplinary research groups.  For example, at Cardiff University, a 'Social Science Park' will soon be created in order to co-locate the various areas of the discipline, promoting collaboration and knowledge mobilisation.  The Welsh Government, via Health and Care Research Wales, has recently emphasised the importance of multidisciplinarity in funding a new national research infrastructure.

Agree with Dan.  It's also important to remember how this looks to the outside world.  To be able to present an integrated approach makes us look more co-ordinated and informed.  Businesses and organisations collaborate routinely: more so now in the global market, so it makes us look out of step if we remain isolated in inter-faculty silos and interdisciplinary protocols.