American Foundations and the Decline of Funding for Interdisciplinary Programs

• In Event: Precarious Positions: Interdisciplinarity in the Americas

Abstract

Just as academic disciplines emerged in the late 1800s, so too, did the movement towards holism, (interdisciplinarity) arise almost 50 years later as an antidote to over-specialization. Researchers suggested that complex societal problems such as poverty, climate change, and AIDS might be more effectively addressed through the combined wisdom of academics from several disciplines. In particular, health crisis such as AIDS, Ebola, and polio benefitted from the insights of medicine, social sciences, and humanities. We studied recent national and international grant-making activities of select American foundations during and after the recession (2009–2014) to examine interdisciplinary projects and discusses the implications-for-faculty.

Authors

• Lisa Jasinski, University of Texas at Austin

• Coreen Davis, The University of Texas at Austin