Setting the interdisciplinary scene

Interdisciplinarity, working across specialities, is something that has been shaping higher education increasingly since the 1990s. It is a mode of working that cuts across the usual habits of a single discipline, focusing on solving a particular problem or situation by drawing on a range of expertise. There are times when grand claims are made for interdisciplinary work, and times when it is seen as a buzzword that needs to be put somewhere because it sounds good in grant applications. Interdisciplinary research is difficult partly because it goes against the grain of specialization, and going into details deeply is inevitable when one is doing research. Interdisciplinary education is even harder because there is often less consensus about what understanding we are trying to impart: subject specialists are themselves often not sure how to agree on these and have to collaborate to find their way to an appropriate understanding in each new collaboration. In this overview, Davies argues that one consequence of this is to emphasize the open-endedness of collaborative research, and that students can be a part of it – indeed they make a vital contribution to judgements about what kinds of knowledge and collaborations are of value