Disentangling the Entanglement

Ying’s background is in law and was initially trained in banking litigation. She later specialised in medical law and ethics, completing an LLM at the University of Edinburgh and a PhD at Newcastle Law School, where her interdisciplinary research focused on human heritable genome editing.

She is part of the Values, Law and Ethics (VLE) team atWarwick Medical School where she contributes extensively to VLE teaching across all phases of the MBChB curriculum and leads all ethics and law sessions for Year 1 HMS students.

Ying’s case study ‘Disentangling the entanglement’ critically reflects on how interdisciplinarity is embedded in her teaching and where it could be strengthened. She describes the module Reprogenetics: intersection between science, society and law, which she designed and currently leads, as an ‘entanglement’ of different disciplines.

Interdisciplinarity within the module

She observed that there are two possible ways to understand interdisciplinarity through her module. First, it is through the exercise of mapping different disciplines involved in understanding reprogenetics (disentangling - seeing the different parts). Second, it is through the understanding the whole topic of reprogenetics as an applied ethics, that is a branch of ethics aiming to navigate and solve a problem through engagement of multiple disciplines, which has been argued as inherently interdisciplinary (seeing the whole). She sees the first approach as helpful for understanding the second: mapping the contributions of various disciplines to the study of reprogenetics can provide a solid ground for developing a more integrated understanding of the topic as an example of applied ethics.

In her exercise of disentangling and mapping the disciplinary contributions to reprogenetics, a potential gap was identified between module design and classroom delivery as the disciplinary boundaries were not always explicitly taught to students. Addressing this gap could help students more deliberately trace how different disciplines inform ethical debates, potentially deepening their understanding of applied ethics as an inherently interdisciplinary practice. Another gap noted was the limited scope for collaboration in learning activities. This highlights an opportunity to develop a more effective collaborative learning environment, enhancing students’ collaboration skills – one of the key interdisciplinary skills alongside critical thinking and reflection that had previously been overlooked.