“It was designed as one large, interconnected building, and the intention was to provide our faculty and our students – all of them – opportunities to bump into one another, to share knowledge and collaborate,” she said. “Then over the years, other structures, like labs and centres, institutes and, most recently, a college, have been created to enable and facilitate interactions across disciplines.”
Paula Hammond, MIT’s vice-provost for faculty, agreed that creating an environment and a culture that allowed spontaneous interactions was vital. “I have this feeling that I could bump into anyone in that hallway and start up a conversation and find a new collaboration or a new project or a new idea,” she said.
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While university leaders talk of fostering a culture that encourages the cross-fertilisation of ideas, the academics THE spoke to were more concerned with career development. Several scholars undertaking cross-disciplinary research said universities needed to do more to support the careers of interdisciplinary scientists.
Flavio Toxvaerd, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Cambridge who engages in interdisciplinary research, said it all came down to incentives.
“The interdisciplinary research output of universities relies on individual researchers choosing to engage in such research. But researchers respond to incentives; so if universities do little to change incentive structures, that will hold back progress on interdisciplinary work,” he said.
“Many universities profess to back innovative research that crosses boundaries, but when it comes to what can actually encourage such research, very little is done.”
Kirsi Cheas, founder and president of Finterdis, the Finnish Interdisciplinary Society, agreed that “academic evaluation practices still tend to promote disciplinary research, projects and positions, rather than allowing space for interdisciplinarity”.
“Many universities still have a long way to go,” she said. “Interdisciplinarity is often a buzzword that is abundantly and vaguely used in university strategies and solemn speeches, but the university leadership announcing such fine goals often does not sufficiently consider what kinds of resources are required for successfully implementing interdisciplinarity.”
Dr Cheas said some fields were better at encouraging interdisciplinary science than others. “In interdisciplinary fields such as sustainability science, inter- and transdisciplinarity is often the norm, and therefore, promotions processes and other practices can more easily manage to encourage interdisciplinarity. In other fields, the process is slower,” she said.
Despite the challenges that interdisciplinary working presents, all the university leaders who THE spoke to were in no doubt of its importance in solving wicked global problems.
How can we approach interdisciplinarity in higher education?
Edson Cocchieri Botelho, pro-rector of research at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) in Brazil, said cross-cutting work was vital in middle-income countries that had many social challenges.
In Asia, the National University of Singapore (NUS), ranked third in the world for interdisciplinary science, is prioritising collaborations across disciplinary boundaries to address some of the world’s most difficult issues.
Liu Bin, deputy president (research and technology) at NUS, said interdisciplinary science was “integral to ensuring research remains cutting-edge and delivers impactful solutions where they are needed”.
The high level of participation in the inaugural Interdisciplinary Science Rankings – 749 universities from 92 countries and territories are included, making it THE’s biggest-ever debut ranking – can be seen as a reflection of the growing importance of interdisciplinary science. “The very fact that [THE] is recognising the significance of interdisciplinary work through a ranking is really exciting and validating,” MIT’s Professor Barnhart said.
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