A biographical take on interdisciplinarity: exploring disciplinary mobilities and power relationships of the professors of biological sciences

Scientific elites are often defined as those who obtain significant scientific credibility based on various indicators, including citations, major scientific prizes, funded projects, and impact (Larivière et al. 2010). Conversely, academic elites are usually defined as individuals who hold concrete power within academic institutions, such as rectors of universities or members of committees involved in financing and promoting scientific activities (Bourdieu 1997). We propose to focus on professors as key actors in the production and transmission of knowledge, who can be endowed either with various volume of scientific and/or academic power. As such, their careers are crucial to understand the power dynamics underlying the symbolic hierarchy of knowledge and disciplines (Bourdieu 2001; Morgan et al. 2022)