Interdisciplinary research is an important approach which is becoming more prominent. It allows you to bring together the most useful parts of different disciplines, approach a question with a different methodology, and discover new ways to take your research to its users.
But what really is interdisciplinary research, and how can you make the most of it?
Multidisciplinary: a central discipline involves others, exchanging knowledge but not integrating with the other disciplines
Cross-disciplinary: researchers across different disciplines collaborate with the goal of transferring knowledge
Interdisciplinary: researchers across different disciplines collaborate to develop new applications, analyses, or entirely new disciplines
Transdisciplinary: researchers across different disciplines collaborate with non-academic participants to reach a common goal
Where should I begin?
How could interdisciplinary work improve your research – and how could your research improve that of others in different disciplines? Interdisciplinary research is important, but make sure you know why you’re doing it, what you’re looking to gain, and what you can offer to other participants.
Consider which disciplines might offer interesting contributions. Be open minded about this! We’ve seen projects where healthcare and performing arts have collaborated, or international studies and agriculture. Interdisciplinary research is about engaging with practices which aren’t usually used in your discipline, so looking further afield can be a good idea.
Make the most of opportunities to engage with colleagues outside of your discipline, and be proactive! Due to the nature of the work, researchers often interact more with those in similar fields day-to-day. Find (and create) opportunities to meet others beyond your immediate area of research.
Think about how best to communicate your research to other disciplines. Language that you use every day might sound like an alien language or mean something very different to someone who hasn’t been involved in your field before. This works both ways – if you’re not sure about the language used by someone in another discipline or have a different understanding of terms, make sure to ask and clarify as soon as possible.
Interdisciplinary Impact
Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects have strong potential for impact, as they link to different areas and bring together aspects of different disciplines. Transdisciplinary research presents the added benefit of introducing non-academic perspectives. This allows you to build pathways towards impact, creating solutions which couldn’t be found within a single discipline and helping to bring benefit to broader groups. Make sure to plan your impact from the early stages of your project, collect evidence as you go, and contact your faculty impact lead or the impact team if you think that you have some exciting impact developing.
Email: impact@port.ac.uk
Research and Innovation 