Transdisciplinary tensions and psychosocial studies

Event synopsis: The interconnectedness of our world has never been more apparent. In a challenge to sociology and the social sciences, contemporary researchers attempt to explain the complexity of social worlds by embracing methods and theoretical approaches that push beyond the traditional boundaries of academic disciplines. Interdisciplinarity as a concept may serve a multiplicity of goals in research, policy and practice. It may include the need to answer complex questions and broad issues, beyond the scope of a single discipline, as well as the need to achieve unity of knowledge in a fragmented world. Arguments for interdisciplinarity appeal to notions of pulling together to solve common problems, which has resonance in the practice sphere with calls for multi-agency working and efficiency. But is the call for interdisciplinarity a generalised plea for cooperation or is it something more? How are we to consider this challenge to established academic disciplines? How do we ‘do’ interdisciplinarity in our research? What does such research set out to achieve? Why do policy-makers look to multi-agency practices to solve complex issues? How should we reconcile the appeal of interdisciplinarity with warnings that it threatens distinctions between genres and leads to the loss of disciplinary identities