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Interdisciplinarity and Universities

Sat, September 2, 4:00 to 5:30pm, Sheraton Boston, Floor: 3, Fairfax B

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

Today, interdisciplinarity is on the rise, and is being promoted at multiple levels. The Europe 2020 agenda emphasizes interdisciplinarity to foster cross-cutting and potentially innovative research. National governments increasingly orient themselves towards addressing societal challenges like aging and global warming. Universities are funding cross-department research initiatives (Biancani, McFarland, Dahlander, & Owens, 2012) and supporting the development of interdisciplinary research centers or institutes (Berman, 2012). Despite policy enthusiasm for interdisciplinarity, systematic investigation of both its rise and its effects has been limited. There has been little empirical research on the link between university policies and interdisciplinary engagement (Jacobs & Frickel, 2009). There is even less research that shows if and how these policies and practices at university level influence university as well as individual productivity. This panel addresses this link between interdisciplinarity and universities as organizations by pursuing the following questions: How do supra-national and national research policy arrangements promote structural change towards interdisciplinarity at universities? How can university engagement in, and commitment to, interdisciplinarity be measured? How do universities promote interdisciplinarity in their own institutions? Why are some universities more highly committed to interdisciplinarity than others? How do individual academics respond to interdisciplinary initiatives at their own institutions? How might interdisciplinarity-oriented policies and practices at universities influence university research productivity? How do interdisciplinarity-oriented policies and practices at universities affect individual faculty scholarship?

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