Progress on interdisciplinarity is just the beginning

You set out to revisit LERU’s 2016 paper on interdisciplinarity. Why now?

Didier Wernli: The idea for the paper came in 2021, five years after the adoption of the 2016 position paper. The question was: what have universities done? What are the challenges and obstacles? In addition, some important EU-funded projects, such as SHAPE-ID, have provided insights about the challenges associated with interdisciplinary research, from methodological to institutional issues.

And is interdisciplinarity still as important as it was in 2016?

Jane Ohlmeyer: We've never needed interdisciplinarity more than we do now, in terms of global challenges and how we tackle the big societal issues that the world faces. Whether it's climate, housing, or the environment, there’s a recognition now that interdisciplinarity is vital, and that the arts, humanities and social sciences are an integral part of finding solutions to these ‘wicked problems’.

Didier Wernli: The issues have evolved, but many of the recommendations still hold. That being said, the 2016 LERU paper had a broader scope, covering also epistemological issues related to interdisciplinarity. This paper focuses on implementation in research-intensive universities, which is fundamentally about how universities are organised.

How have universities responded?

Didier Wernli: While universities have made progress, their organisation is discipline-based, so the challenge is to govern interdisciplinarity in disciplinary based institutions. That’s not always straightforward.

Jane Ohlmeyer: What we have to do is create other mechanisms that facilitate interdisciplinarity, predominantly in the postgraduate community, and where possible with undergraduates, but also in interdisciplinary research institutes. Many of these institutes are relatively new, but that's where we're seeing the most impact, particularly with early-career researchers and engaging with transdisciplinarity.

Didier Wernli: Yet these new structures also present universities with a challenge. How are they represented in the governance structure, which is inevitably rooted in the disciplines? How much do they participate in decision-making and planning? Different institutions handle it in different ways, but there hasn’t been much deep reflection on this question across universities. This LERU paper allowed us to think about that in a more transversal way.

How can implementation be better supported in future?

Jane Ohlmeyer: Funding councils can shape the agenda by how they allocate resources, and if you want serious research to be done that is truly interdisciplinary, then you have to fund it accordingly. You cannot privilege one discipline over another: everybody has to be considered an equal partner, which is particularly important for the arts, humanities and social sciences which, until now, have been treated in a tokenistic way. The European Commission now recognises this, but national funding councils have not always got it right. But from that perspective, I think we're beginning to see a shift.

Didier Wernli: We lack evaluators with the skills to properly evaluate interdisciplinary research. As the funding comes, anyone can label themselves as interdisciplinary, but there is a need for real level of engagement, and this is where the processes for evaluation needs to be strengthened.

You also single out career development as a barrier to interdisciplinarity…

Didier Wernli: Career development and support is the most important issue over the long term, and we’ve seen a lot of relevant discussion about moving from a single, quantitative assessment of researchers to more multidimensional career assessment. This allows us to broaden the perspective on what is valuable and how people can contribute, which is very important for moving interdisciplinarity forward.

Jane Ohlmeyer: Early-career researchers have to understand that engaging across disciplines, which is high-risk and time consuming, is actually going to benefit their careers. At the moment there's no incentive for them to do it, so universities have to have structures that reward interdisciplinarity, rather than actively mitigate against collaboration across faculties, and across disciplines.

Does the study of interdisciplinarity have a contribution to make?

Jane Ohlmeyer: There is a rich literature on interdisciplinarity, and it's very important that its practitioners are at the heart of the evaluation of education or research. That’s part of building the skill set.

Didier Wernli: There are many methodological resources available on how to conduct interdisciplinary research and related topics, such as team science or transdisciplinarity. Overall, these insights are useful to increase research excellence.

What stands out among the examples of good practice you’ve seen?

Jane Ohlmeyer: Across the LERU network we found a number of very good examples of interdisciplinarity, and they're all outlined in the report. But for me it's the research institutes set up to promote interdisciplinarity that are the real engines driving this within universities.

Didier Wernli: Linked to these institutes we’ve also seen the development of education programmes on sustainable development and global health, for example. These are in high demand from students, and that in turn creates the need for people who are able to teach in these programmes. As a result, positions are labelled as interdisciplinary, and this creates opportunities, and leads to a system that can start to perpetuate itself.

You also point to a skills gap for interdisciplinary teaching. What can be done to fill it?

Didier Wernli: Problem-based learning is useful, where students are presented with a problem or a challenge, and then need to mobilise what they know about different disciplines to better understand it. But of course, this format requires support in order to be implemented.

Jane Ohlmeyer: Team teaching is another way of addressing this gap, and this is where technology helps. If you don't have the expertise in your own institution, you're able to bring it in, at least virtually. I don’t think we'll ever have the perfect interdisciplinary scholar, so we’ll always need to collaborate and cooperate.

How optimistic are you about implementation over the next five years?

Jane Ohlmeyer: People recognise the importance of change, so I think things are moving in the right direction. At the same time, you cannot have strong interdisciplinarity without strong disciplines. It's not an either/or. You still have to fund the underlying disciplines, but you have to fund them in such a way that you encourage people to move beyond their disciplines.

Didier Wernli: Interdisciplinarity is a key part of the ongoing broader transformation of our knowledge system, which ultimately underpins how we live on this planet. For example, the enduring divide between the natural and the social sciences and humanities is contributing to the problems we have with the environment, so we need interdisciplinarity as part of a transformation to sustainability.

Didier Wernli is Associate Professor at the University of Geneva and Deputy Director for Research at its Global Studies Institute. Jane Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin, and coordinator of the EU-funded Shaping Interdisciplinary Practices in Europe (SHAPE-ID) project which is based in the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute.

©LERU: Text by Ian Mundell.