IM941

Adventures in Interdisciplinary Research: Knowledge, Practice, Values

15/20/30 (CORE) CATS - (7.5/10/15 ECTS)

Optional module for all CIM taught PG students

TERM 2

In an increasingly complex and changing world, researchers inside and outside the academy constantly face challenges that require collaborating and thinking across disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinary skills are said to improve not only creativity and critical thinking but also academic performance and employability. But do you know what interdisciplinarity is or how to do interdisciplinary research?

This module combines an introduction to a range of approaches to interdisciplinary research with a critical evaluation of the challenges and advantages of interdisciplinarity. Drawing on the experience of a team of interdisciplinary researchers, you will be able to explore what interdisciplinarity means in practice and develop the interdisciplinary skills of critical thinking and creativity that are vital for employment.

Module Convenor - Professor Celia Lury, with Dr Siddharth Peter de Souza and Dr Carla Washbourne

Assessment

For 15 CATS: 2000 word essay (100%)

For 20 CATS: 1000 word report (20%) and 2500 word essay (80%)

For 30 CATS: 1000 word report (20% and 4000 word essay (80%)

Indicative Syllabus

Week One: What is a discipline? What is interdisciplinarity? How do disciplines divide the world? Is there a hierarchy of disciplines? A critical consideration of problem spaces, wicked problems, the politics of openness, and the politics of collaborative research. Histories of interdisciplinarity.

 Week Two: Who does interdisciplinary research - where and how? Changing knowledge infrastructures, the knowledge economy and the internalization of science by society. Inter-, multi-, cross-, trans–interdisciplinary research.

 Week Three: The politics of interdisciplinarity , the university today and the geo-politics of methodology

 Week Four: Questions of methodology and ethics Questions of methodology, epistemology, ethics and practice

 Week Five: Workshop - the challenges of doing interdisciplinarity Exploring the concepts, methods and approaches you are using in your studies from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives

 Week Six: Reading Week

 Week Seven: Workshop - the challenges of doing interdisciplinarity

 Week Eight: Workshop - the challenges of doing interdisciplinarity

 Week Nine: Workshop - the challenges of doing interdisciplinarity

 Week Ten: What are the values of interdisciplinarity? What is interdisciplinarity good for and why does it matter?

Illustrative Bibliography

Barry, A., Born, G. and Weszkalnys, G. (2008) Logics of interdisciplinarity, Economy and Society, 37(1): 20-49.

Barry, A and Born G (eds) (2013) Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences, Abingdon:

Routledge.

Bhabdar, B. (2016) The Stern Review. LRB Blog: URL: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/08/02/brenna-bhandar/thestern-review/.

Boix Mansilla, V., Lamont, M. and Sato, K. (2016) Shared cognitive-emotional-interactional platforms: markers and conditions for successful interdisciplinary collaborations’, Science, Technology & Human Values, 41(4): 571-612.

Cazeaux, C. (2008). Inherently interdisciplinary: four perspectives on practice-based research‘, Journal of Visual Arts Practice 7(2), 107-32

Cooke, B., Kothari, U. (2001) Participation – the new tyranny? London: Zed Books.

Gad, C. and Bruun Jensen, C. (2016) Lateral concepts, Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 2: 3-12.

Kelly, A. H. and McGoey, L. (2018) 'Facts, power and global evidence: a new empire of truth' Economy and Society, 47:1, 1-26.

Kimbell, L. (2015) Rethinking design thinking, Part I, Design and Culture, 3(3): 285-306.

Kukutai, T., Taylor, J. (2016) Indigenous Data Sovereignty: Toward an Agenda. Canberra: Australian National University Press.

Ledford, H. (2015) How to solve the world’s biggest problems. Nature 525 (7569)

Lury, C. and Wakeford, N. (eds.) (2012) Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social, London: Routledge.

Lury, C. et al eds. (2018) Routledge International Handbook of Interdisciplinary Methods, Routledge, London

Marres, N. et al. eds (2018) Inventing the Social, Mattering Press, Manchester.

Nowotny, H., Scott, P. and Gibbons, M. (2001) Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Parker, M. and Kingori, P. (2016) Good and Bad Research Collaborations: Researchers’ Views on Science and Ethics

in Global Health Research. PLoS ONE 11(10): e0163579. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163579.

Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017) Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds, University of Minnesota Press.

Ricuarte, P. (2019) Data epistemologies, the coloniality of power, and resistance, Television & Society, 18 (4): 435-455.

Smith, L. T. (2012) Decolonising Methodologies. London: Zed Books. S

Tejaswini, N. (2013) Introduction to Genealogies of the Asian Present: Situating Inter-Asia Cultural Studies,

https://www.academia.edu/14934670/Introduction_to_Genealogies_of_the_Asian_Present_Situating_Inter-

Asia_Cultural_Studies

Verran, H. (2014) Working with those who think otherwise. Common Knowledge 20(3): 527-539.

Won Yin Wong, W. (2017) Speculative authorship in the city of fakes, Current Anthropology, 58: S15, S103-S112

Woods, A. (2015) ‘Interdisciplinary Authorship’ in Working Knowledge - Transferable Methodology for Interdisciplinary

Research URL: http://www.workingknowledgeps.com/

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Describe and identify the value of interdisciplinarity for contemporary research

• Demonstrate an understanding of the history of inter-disciplinarity

• Distinguish interdisciplinarity from trans- and multi-disciplinarity

• Demonstrate knowledge of a range of creative and innovative approaches to interdisciplinary research

• Critically reflect upon the relevance of interdisciplinary skills to implement collaborations in professional, practitioner and academic contexts.