The policy and practice of interdisciplinary in the Swedish University Research System

This report investigates the extent to which the various parts of the Swedish university research system are pulling together towards greater interdisciplinarity. Do national policy initiatives foster greater interdisciplinarity at the local level of universities? How far is interdisciplinarity embedded in university practice, and what is the driving force behind the emergence of interdisciplinarity in universities? Further, what is the attitude to it among university leaders and researchers? These questions are particularly pertinent to the Swedish research system, where the basic research councils, along with direct government funding to universities, have dominated the research funding system for most of the postwar period, and where research activities outside the corporate sector are concentrated to the universities. To answer these questions, data on interdisciplinary policy and practice were collected at three levels of analysis: the political/policy level, the organizational level of the university, and at the grass-roots level of interdisciplinary programmes