Interdisciplinarity (general relevance) – Page 4 – Integration and Implementation Insights

Facilitating serendipity for interdisciplinary research

August 11, 2023January 21, 2020

By Catherine Lyall

author-catherine-lyall — Catherine Lyall (biography)

How can institutions facilitate the serendipitous encounters that so often appear to characterise interdisciplinary careers? Is there an inherent hypocrisy in university leaders, research funders and policymakers claiming that they want to facilitate interdisciplinarity and then not creating the conditions that experienced interdisciplinarians say they need in order to foster this style of working?

Here I examine the importance of informal interactions, physical locations, the ‘small stuff’ and ‘slow research.’ I draw on interviews with British academics (at various career stages from postdoc to professor) whose doctoral studies had been funded by deliberately interdisciplinary studentship schemes. For more detail, including the sources of the quotations, see Lyall (2019).

Informality is crucial

Finding the time and space for informal discussions with colleagues is critical.

10 tips for next generation interdisciplinary research

April 5, 2022October 1, 2019

By Rachel Kelly

Author - Rachel Kelly — Rachel Kelly (biography)

Can we develop a shared understanding on how to engage in an interdisciplinary setting that will be useful in addressing current and future grand challenges?

Advice provided by interdisciplinary experts from 25 countries, across all continents, and with over 240 years cumulative experience (Kelly, et al., 2019) is combined here into succinct guidance that aims to empower researchers wishing to engage in interdisciplinary endeavors. The ten tips are also summarized in the figure below (focused on socio-ecological researchers).

Learning from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research ‘failures’

May 1, 2024August 6, 2019

By Dena Fam and Michael O’Rourke

authors_dena-fam_michael-orourke — 1. Dena Fam (biography)
2. Michael O’Rourke (biography)

What makes interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research challenging? What can go wrong and lead to failure? What has your experience been?

Modes of research that involve the integration of different perspectives, such as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, are notoriously challenging for a host of reasons. Interdisciplinary research requires the combination of insights from different academic disciplines and it is common that these:

bear the stamp of different epistemologies; and,
involve different types of data collected using different methods in the service of different explanations.

Incommensurability, plain difference and communication in interdisciplinary research

March 11, 2022April 9, 2019

By Vincenzo Politi

Where does the term incommensurability come from? What is its relevance to interdisciplinarity? Is it more than plain difference? Does incommensurability need to be reconceptualized for interdisciplinarity?

Incommensurability: its origins and relevance to interdisciplinarity

‘Incommensurability’ is a term that philosophers of science have borrowed from mathematics. Two mathematical magnitudes are said to be incommensurable if their ratio cannot be expressed by a number which is an integer. For example, the radius and the circumference of a circle are incommensurable because their ratio is expressed by the irrational number π.

Metacognition as a prerequisite for interdisciplinary integration

September 11, 2024February 5, 2019

By Machiel Keestra

What’s needed to enable the integration of concepts, theories, methods, and results across disciplines? Why is communication among experts important, but not sufficient? Interdisciplinary experts must also meta-cognize: both individually and as a team they must monitor, evaluate and regulate their cognitive processes and mental representations. Without this, expertise will function suboptimally both for individuals and teams. Metacognition is not an easy task, though, and deserves more attention in both training and collaboration processes than it usually gets. Why is metacognition so challenging and how can it be facilitated?

Embracing tension for energy and creativity in interdisciplinary research

September 12, 2024January 15, 2019

By Liz Clarke and Rebecca Freeth

authors_liz-clarke_rebecca-freeth — 1. Liz Clarke (biography)
2. Rebecca Freeth (biography)

Tensions inevitably arise in inter- and transdisciplinary research. Dealing with these tensions and resulting conflicts is one of the hardest things to do. We are meant to avoid or get rid of conflict and tension, right? Wrong!

Tension and conflict are not only inevitable; they can be a source of positivity, emergence, creativity and deep learning. By tension we mean the pull between the seemingly contradictory parts of a paradox, such as parts and wholes, stability and chaos, and rationality and creativity.

Skilful conversations for integration

September 11, 2024November 6, 2018

By Rebecca Freeth and Liz Clarke

mosaic_authors_rebecca-freeth_liz-clarke — 1. Rebecca Freeth (biography)
2. Liz Clarke (biography)

Interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle complex problems is challenging! In particular, interdisciplinary communication can be very difficult – how do we bridge the gulf of mutual incomprehension when we are working with people who think and talk so very differently from us? What skills are required when mutual incomprehension escalates into conflict, or thwarts decision making on important issues?

It is often at this point that collaborations lose momentum. In the absence of constructive or productive exchange, working relationships stagnate and people retreat to the places where they feel safest: their own disciplines, their offices, or the colleagues who are on their ‘side’. As a consequence, prospects for meaningful collaboration and integration dwindle.

Introducing interdisciplinary postgraduate degrees? Seven meta-considerations

December 19, 2024August 7, 2018

By Dena Fam, Scott Kelly, Tania Leimbach, Lesley Hitchens and Michelle Callen

authors_fam_kelly_leimbach_hitchens_callen — 1. Dena Fam; 2. Scott Kelly; 3. Tania Leimbach; 4. Lesley Hitchens; 5. Michelle Callen (biographies)

What is required to plan, introduce and standardize interdisciplinary learning in higher education?

In a two-year process at the University of Technology Sydney we identified seven meta-considerations (Fam et al., 2018). These are based on a literature review of best practice of interdisciplinary programs internationally, as well as widespread consultation and engagement across the university. Each meta-consideration is illustrated by a word cloud and a key quotation from our consultations.

1: Create an interdisciplinary community and culture

There was a perceived need to develop and foster supportive and mutually beneficial relationships among students, and between students and academic staff, as well as to build dynamic and healthy working relationships among the academic areas involved.

Institutionalising interdisciplinarity: Lessons from Latin America / Institucionalizar la interdisciplina: Lecciones desde América Latina

July 18, 2023July 17, 2018

By Bianca Vienni Baptista, Federico Vasen and Juan Carlos Villa Soto

authors_bianca-vienni_federico-vasen_juan-carlos-villa-soto — 1. Bianca Vienni Baptista (biography)
2. Federico Vasen (biography)
3. Juan Carlos Villa Soto (biography)

A Spanish version of this post is available

What lessons and challenges about institutionalising interdisciplinarity can be systematized from experiences in Latin American universities?

We analyzed three organizational structures in three different countries to find common challenges and lessons learned that transcend national contexts and the particularities of individual universities. The three case studies are located in:

Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina. The Argentinian center (1986 – 2003) was created in a top-down manner without participation of the academic community, and its relative novelty in organizational terms was also a cause of its instability and later closure.
Universidad de la República in Uruguay. The Uruguayan case, started in 2008, shows an innovative experience in organizational terms based on a highly interactive and participatory process.
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The Mexican initiative, which began in 1986, shows a center with a network structure in organizational terms where the focus was redefined over time.

What can interdisciplinary collaborations learn from the science of team science?

April 9, 2026June 19, 2018

By Suzi Spitzer

How can we improve interdisciplinary collaborations? There are many lessons to be learned from the Science of Team Science. The following ten lessons summarize many of the ideas that were shared at the International Science of Team Science Conference in Galveston, Texas, in May 2018 [Moderator update – In April 2026, an embedded link to the Galveston 2018 conference in this sentence was no longer available and so the link structure has been left in place but the active link deleted: scienceofteamscience.org/2018-scits-conference/].

1. Team up with the right people
On the most basic level, scientists working on teams should be willing to integrate their thoughts with their teammates’ ideas. Participants should also possess a variety of social skills, such as negotiation and social perceptiveness. The most successful teams also encompass a moderate degree of deep-level diversity (values, perspectives, cognitive styles) and include women in leadership roles.

A guide for interdisciplinary researchers: Adding axiology alongside ontology and epistemology

January 19, 2021May 22, 2018

By Peter Deane

Can philosophical insights be useful for interdisciplinary researchers in extending their thinking about the role of values and knowledge in research? More broadly, can a model or heuristic simplify some of the complexity in understanding how research works?

It’s common for interdisciplinary researchers to consider ontology and epistemology, two major arms of philosophical inquiry into human understanding, but axiology – a third major arm – is oft overlooked.

I start by describing axiology, then detail work by Michael Patterson and Daniel Williams (1998) who place axiology alongside ontology and epistemology. The outcome herein is to cautiously eject and then present a part of their work as a heuristic that may help interdisciplinary researchers to extend understanding on philosophical commitments that underlie research.

Using the arts and design to build student creative collaboration capacity

September 12, 2024May 15, 2018

By Edgar Cardenas

How can undergraduate and graduate students be helped to build their interdisciplinary collaboration capacity? In particular, how do they build capacity between the arts and other disciplines?

In 2018, I co-facilitated the annual, 3-day Emerging Creatives Student Summit, an event for approximately 100 undergraduate and graduate students from 26 universities organized by the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities. Students’ majors ranged from the sciences, engineering, music, arts, and design.