What is Interdisciplinarity?
Interdisciplinarity takes on so many different and exciting forms at Warwick
Each discipline and department might have a slightly different take on it, but whatever your degree or study level is, Interdisciplinarity is at the core of your Warwick experience. We spoke to over 80 undergraduate and postgraduate students asking them to define what Interdisciplinarity was for them. Here is how our students define it:
Interdisciplinarity is learning to communicate across disciplines
It may be considered as some of the characteristic qualities of the 21st century where it is necessary to connect facts from different realms to understand the world using the knowledge and perspectives of different disciplines when analysing and interpreting phenomena
Bringing different people from all backgrounds together and finding links with people you wouldn't otherwise
Looking into the practices and theories of different fields and applying them
Being able to find a common link between disciplines and see how skills and streams link together
Interdisciplinarity at Warwick
Warwick Secret Challenge
Warwick Secret Challenge is an interdisciplinary brainstorming workshop with elements of design thinking. It was developed and piloted in 2017/18 academic year by a team of Warwick students as an opportunity to challenge oneself, meet other students and learn beyond the boundaries of a degree and department.
Warwick students have since worked on multiple challenges by bringing diverse subject knowledge, backgrounds, skills and interests to propose innovative solutions to regional, global and University problems such as:
- Think Global, Act Local - how might we engage students and young people with Coventry 2021?
- Digital Student Experience - how might we improve digital student experience at Warwick?
- Student and Staff Wellbeing - how might we improve international and intercultural integration at Warwick?
To read more about the Challenge and find out the details of the upcoming workshops, visit the Warwick Enterprise page or get in touch with Warwick Innovation Fellows via innovation at warwick dot ac dot uk
Critical Issues in Law and Management
Critical Issues in Law and Management is a second year interdisciplinary core module for Law and Business Students, ran jointly by the Law School and Warwick Business School, as part of the Law and Business Degree.
The module explores the overlap between the two disciplines by looking at the contemporary issues that we are facing today, while working on the embodied critical and creative skills of the students. To this aim, the module leader Nese Ceren Tosun uses a range of interdisciplinary literature and methodologies ranging from semiotics to actors' training activities to engage with business and law case studies in an innovative and imaginative fashion.
Previous student-devised assessments have successfully and playfully combined interdisciplinary modes of expression with complex issues: A piñata of legal concepts, t-shirt designs with self-reflections, spoken words on morality, etc.
