Reflections on the Staff Hub: A Conversation Between Cathy and Jenna
Summary
Cathy and Jenna reflect on their interdisciplinary experiences as well as the process of creating the Staff Hub in a conversation. Cathy first shares about her background in interdisciplinarity as well as the initial idea for the staff Hub, and then asks Jenna to share some key insights from her interviews with various staff and students in the development of Case Studies. Both Cathy and Jenna agree that....
Highlights
“If you can imagine a rope with different coloured strands and those different disciplines were different colours. It's about blending all of those together so that they're all intertwined and that the disciplines have an understanding about how they sit with the other disciplines.”
“There is a lot of motivation to keep doing this work and a lot of motivation to want others to know about it too.”
“There’s a home for interdisciplinarity because it's a key part of the university strategy. That was the aim of the hub. It was to have resources to support interdisciplinarity, and to help staff to deliver that in terms of teaching and learning.”
“The staff and students, they are one community. We're just slightly different perspectives on two sides of the same coin. We are intermingled. So whatever benefits the staff in terms of interdisciplinarity work is directly going to benefit the students.”
Prof. Catherine Hale
Catherine Hale is a professor in both the Law School and the Medical school. She specialises in medical law and ethics.
Cathy is a fellow of the Warwick International Higher Education Academy and a member of the Interdisciplinary Learning Circle. Along with Joanne Wale, she led the WIHEA-funded project: Interdisciplinary Transformative Review and Network 2024, which involved the creation of the Interdisciplinary Staff Hub and a longitudinal report on ITLR data from 2017 and 2023 to track the university’s progress on interdisciplinary teaching and learning.
See Cathy’s full bio here.
Jenna Nilson
Jenna is a Chancellor’s International Scholar recipient and PhD student in Education Studies with second supervision in Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. Her research focuses on arts-based research in language education for migrant communities. She holds an MFA in Theatre for Youth and Communities from Arizona State University. Jenna worked as a project officer on the Interdisciplinary Staff Hub. Her primary role consisted of interviewing staff and students to collate case studies for the Hub.
Further Resources
Curious to learn more?
You can also contact Catherine and Jenna: Catherine.Hale@warwick.ac.uk and Jenna.Nilson@warwick.ac.uk