Interdisciplinarity (general relevance)

Navigating inter- and transdisciplinary PhD supervision: Practical questions for students and supervisors

By Erika Angarita, Anna Hajdu, Yanyan Huang, BinBin Pearce, Guadalupe Peres-Cajías, Hussein Zeidan and Yuanyuan Zhu.

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1. Erika Angarita; 2. Anna Hajdu; 3. Yanyan Huang; 4. BinBin Pearce; 5. Guadalupe Peres-Cajías; 6. Hussein Zeidan; 7. Yuanyuan Zhu (biographies)

How can a student and their supervisors develop a shared map for a PhD project when they come from different disciplinary traditions, hold different assumptions about knowledge and quality, and operate within institutional systems that are still largely structured around single disciplines? How can they navigate what may feel obvious to one and may be invisible to another?

We developed a structured checklist of questions designed to support supervision conversations and reduce tensions resulting from unspoken assumptions.

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Developing a conceptual framework to support communication, collaboration and integration

By Hanna Salomon, Jialin Zhang and Sabine Hoffmann.

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1. Hanna Salomon (biography)
2. Jialin Zhang (biography)
3. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)

How can the process of developing a conceptual framework in an inter- and transdisciplinary research project itself create valuable space for reflection, alignment, and learning?

What we have found when developing a project-specific conceptual framework is that the process is as important, if not more important, for the research team than the emerging conceptual framework itself. The process provides space and time to discuss and deep-dive into concepts and terms used within the research team leading to much needed discussions and insights for the individual researchers.

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A self-assessment checklist to improve interdisciplinarity in research projects / Un questionnaire d’auto-évaluation pour améliorer les projets de recherche interdisciplinaire

By Flore Nonchez.

A French version of this post is available

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Flore Nonchez (biography)

How can researchers improve the quality of their interdisciplinary proposals? What would help in clarifying project formulation, enriching description, maximizing relevance, facilitating workplan implementation (by anticipating possible difficulties) and enhancing impact?

The self-assessment checklist provided below aims to help project leaders and their research teams systematically consider the specific interdisciplinary aspects of an interdisciplinary research project, whatever their original discipline or experience of interdisciplinarity.

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Building co-production capabilities in researchers: Strengthening reflexivity via learning opportunities

By Emma Ligtermoet, Claudia Munera-Roldan, Cathy Robinson, Zaynel Sushil and Peat Leith.

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1. Emma Ligtermoet; 2. Claudia Munera-Roldan; 3. Cathy Robinson; 4. Zaynel Sushil; 5. Peat Leith (biographies)

What forms of learning can support interdisciplinary teams to rapidly build reflexivity capabilities, especially in preparation for doing transdisciplinary (engaged) science with non-researcher societal actors?

Transdisciplinary co-production requires deep and reflexive learning. Reflexivity is a key capability for researchers doing inter- and transdisciplinary science, involving the critical enquiry of existing assumptions, values and norms underlying our decisions and actions, with the aim to adapt or change current practices or discourses.

Such learning is foundational for understanding and proactively engaging with knowledge-power dynamics, including potentially catalysing shifts in incumbent dynamics when preparing to engage with non-societal actors.

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A framework for creating effective team integration in interdisciplinary research

By Colleen Cuddy.

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Colleen Cuddy (biography)

What kinds of integration are required in interdisciplinary teams to truly synthesize diverse knowledge and perspectives, creating meaningful outcomes? What are the key facilitators of successful integration?

Integration is a core team process in which “ideas, data and information, methods, tools, concepts, and/or theories … are synthesized, connected, or blended” (Repko, 2012: 4), combining diverse inputs that differ from and are more than the sum of parts (National Research Council, 2015). Integration is multifaceted, and interdisciplinary teams employ several types of integration, as shown in the table below. Social, knowledge, cognitive, and conceptual integration can be seen as a spectrum, with teams utilizing multiple types of integration, often concurrently, to reach team goals, and with innovative teams moving through the spectrum towards conceptual integration.

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What roles do you play in inter- and transdisciplinary projects?

By Hanna Salomon, Benjamin Hofmann and Sabine Hoffmann.

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1. Hanna Salomon (biography)
2. Benjamin Hofmann (biography)
3. Sabine Hoffmann (biography)

What roles do researchers typically play in inter- and transdisciplinary projects? How can they be made transparent in order to reflect on them?

Inter- and transdisciplinary projects typically require different roles and the researchers involved may play one or more of them. There is a plethora of literature describing various ideal-typical roles and we used the literature on researchers’ roles in sustainability science to develop a reflection tool on researcher roles in inter- and transdisciplinary projects.

A Role Reflection Tool

The reflection tool consists of a role survey for individual researchers, a spider web graph for immediate role visualization on the individual and project team level, and a set of questions for individual and project team reflections.

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Considerations for creating and funding new toolkits for inter- and transdisciplinary research

By Bethany Laursen, Bianca Vienni-Baptista, Gabriele Bammer, Antonietta Di Giulio, Theres Paulsen, Melissa Robson-Williams and Sibylle Studer.

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1. Bethany Laursen; 2. Bianca Vienni-Baptista; 3. Gabriele Bammer; 4. Antonietta Di Giulio; 5. Theres Paulsen; 6. Melissa Robson-Williams; 7. Sibylle Studer (biographies)

Are you thinking about creating a new toolkit for inter- and transdisciplinary research? What questions can help you consider whether to embark on such an effort? If you are a funder, how can you decide whether to support existing toolkits or fund new ones? And how can toolkits help your reviewers in considering funding applications?

We are the core members of the Toolkits and Methods Working Group hosted within the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity (ITD Alliance). Since 2020, we have jointly mapped and visualized the previously uncharted landscape of inter- or transdisciplinary toolkits.

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Mindset matters for interdisciplinary teams: Choose a collaborative one

By L. Michelle Bennett

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L. Michelle Bennett (biography)
  • How often do you think about what you are thinking about?
  • How about what you believe? What your values are? Or your deep set needs?
  • Do you recognize that everything you say, do, or write as a member of an interdisciplinary team is influenced by what is in your head? And your team members by what is in theirs?

We can all relate to what it is like to be doing a project with close colleagues when things work seamlessly, the group is productive, everyone innately seems to know what to do and how to do it, people are comfortable pointing out things that need to be changed or fixed, and everyone is fully present.

I’m guessing we can all also relate to what it is like when there is tension among colleagues. Maybe there is something amiss that everyone sees or notices, but no one is willing to surface for discussion, so everyone sidesteps.

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Towards a taxonomy of synthesizing

By Howard Gardner

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Howard Gardner (biography) (photo credit: Harvard Graduate School of Education)

“Synthesis” seems to be in the atmosphere. The capacity to synthesize, the need for syntheses, and improvement of the quality of syntheses—these are seemingly of interest to many.

A preliminary working definition:

A synthesis is an attempt to bring together various ideas, strands, concepts, and materials. A good synthesis enhances one’s understanding of a question, puzzle, phenomenon (or multiples of these). Familiar examples are school term papers, doctoral dissertations, position papers, landscape analyses, executive summaries, and textbooks. But one can easily extend the list beyond the verbal—to chemical syntheses, equations in physics or mathematics, works of art (poems, paintings, dioramas)—indeed any creation or invention that brings together disparate elements in a satisfying and illuminating way.

Of course, it’s important to avoid the situation where just about everything qualifies as a synthesis.

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Interdisciplinary teamwork: Expert and non-expert at the same time

By Annemarie Horn and Eduardo Urias

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1. Annemarie Horn (biography)
2. Eduardo Urias (biography)

How do teams engage in interdisciplinary knowledge integration and how can they be supported in doing so? Why does simple sharing and questioning of knowledge not necessarily lead to interdisciplinary knowledge integration? And what does it mean to act as both an expert and a non-expert in interdisciplinary teamwork, and why is it hard?

In a five month course, we supervised a team of eight master students in the integration of insights and concepts from their individual, discipline-based projects into a joint work about circular economy. Based on our earlier research, described in our i2Insights contribution on four typical behaviours in interdisciplinary knowledge integration, we expected that if we helped the students to share their own knowledge and to engage with each other’s knowledge, that integration would emerge. We therefore had students prepare and give presentations about their individual projects, background, and conceptual underpinnings to share their knowledge.

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A practical framework for transforming academia through inter- and transdisciplinarity / Un marco práctico para transformar el mundo académico mediante la interdisciplinariedad y la transdisciplinariedad

By Bianca Vienni Baptista and Danilo Streck

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1. Bianca Vienni Baptista (biography)
2. Danilo Streck (biography)

A Spanish version of this post is available.

How can the role of inter- and transdisciplinarity be re-imagined at higher education institutions?

This i2Insights contribution presents a practical framework developed with Julie Thompson Klein and based on fifteen case studies from Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and North America that described how inter- and transdisciplinarity have been institutionalised in higher education.

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Using the arts to flip understanding: An arts intervention for non-arts researchers

By Margot Greenlee, Martina Jerant and Veronica Dittman Stanich

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1. Margot Greenlee (biography)
2. Martina Jerant (biography)
3. Veronica Dittman Stanich (biography)

What do the arts bring to interdisciplinary research? Can arts practices lead STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) researchers to new insights on their work?

We—a choreographer-and-professional-facilitator (Margot), a scientist-athlete-facilitator-entrepreneur (Martina), and a dancer-turned-arts-researcher (Veronica)—had a hunch that the arts have something to offer STEMM researchers: a different understanding of their own work.

We posited that thoughts are intertwined with actions, and when there is no opportunity to do things differently, it’s hard to think differently—to get a fresh perspective. By “actions”, we mean the practices researchers do every day as part of their work: for example, read, collect data, analyze data, present ideas in written form, revise that writing. Whatever the typical practices of a field or discipline are, as researchers train and eventually become experts in that field, its practices become habitual.

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