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Interdisciplinary Research Journeys: Practical Strategies for Capturing Creativity

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Interdisciplinary Research Journeys: Practical Strategies for Capturing Creativity Lyall, Catherine, Ann Bruce, Joyce Tait, and Laura Meagher. "Planning the Expedition: Designing interdisciplinary research projects." Interdisciplinary Research Journeys: Practical Strategies for Capturing Creativity. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. 25–50. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 27 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781849661782.ch-003>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 27 September 2021, 04:09 UTC. Copyright © Catherine Lyall, Ann Bruce, Joyce Tait and Laura Meagher 2011. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 3 Planning the Expedition Designing interdisciplinary research projects Introduction Like any expedition, an interdisciplinary project needs to know why it is head- ing out, where it is going, who is going with the team or supporting it and how it is going to progress. But many interdisciplinary projects will be much more like explorations of virgin territory, so the answers to some of these questions will not be knowable in detail before setting out. There will also be solo expe- ditions which may raise different challenges. In general, several key steps need to be taken: ● First, a decision has to be made as to whether the research project actually needs to be interdisciplinary in order to advance its goals. ● Then, either a suitable collaborative team needs to be assembled, with selection informed by an understanding of different disciplines’ approaches and assumptions and an awareness of the importance of skills, expertise and personality, or the individual concerned needs to ensure that they already have, or can acquire, the interdisciplinary capacity to do the research. ● A joint approach to tackling the research question has to be developed and a plan for integrating the contributions of component disciplines needs to be devised, taking into account the extra time and effort required. ● All of this needs to be done with appropriate leadership, refl ection and, if necessary, adaptation of the plans as the journey unfolds. In this chapter we will consider some of the basic challenges of designing interdisciplinary research projects and how these may be overcome, starting off with the basic question, ‘Does this research project need to be interdisciplinary?’ Chapter 4 will then develop further some of the themes of team-building, project management and leadership. 25 BOOK.indb 25 02/06/11 7:24 PM 26 INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNEYS Deciding on the focus At the outset, development of a research design entails consideration of whether an interdisciplinary approach is the best way to achieve the research objectives. Both discipline-based and interdisciplinary research are valuable and both are necessary in specifi c circumstances, but interdisciplinary projects are likely to require greater resourcing and are generally more complex to run than single discipline projects. Given the potential benefi ts, there are a variety of reasons why a research project should be interdisciplinary. Some areas of study are inherently interdisciplinary, as noted already in chapter 2. Many research fi elds, such as agriculture, environmental science, ecology or geography, are them- selves ‘portmanteau disciplines’ which are broad, outward-looking and open to other methods (Phillipson et al. 2009), and draw on a range of specialist disciplines. For example, information systems analysis may take into account social needs and interface design for specifi c requirements; development- oriented research will not only take into account different disciplines but will also need to work cross-culturally. In other circumstances, interdisciplinary groups are brought together to address specifi c research questions that have either proven intractable to monodisciplinary approaches or that require a range of specialisms. There are various situations when interdisciplinary research may be relevant or indeed vital. The European Commission funded a study of interdisciplinarity in its Fifth Framework Research Programme (II-FP5) (Tait et al . 2002), as summarized in Case Study 3.1. The following motivations for choosing an interdisciplinary project were identifi ed: ● the nature of the subject was interdisciplinary (e.g. transport, environment); ● researchers were looking to apply results in the ‘real world’, so-called ‘translational research’, or to break down barriers between science and society; ● the research was driven by users, who might be commercial companies, policy-makers or civil society groups; ● research in a single discipline had reached a bottleneck and more disciplines were needed to make a breakthrough. Types of funding can infl uence the project design: interdisciplinary research projects may be circumscribed and driven by the needs of research funders and, in particular, by the way in which peers will review those research project proposals. Interdisciplinary research can also be the result of a speculative pro- posal (where the topic originates from the researcher, termed ‘responsive mode’ proposals in the UK) or a specifi c research call requesting an interdisciplinary BOOK.indb 26 02/06/11 7:24 PM PLANNING THE EXPEDITION 27 Case Study 3.1 Studying interdisciplinarity within the European Commission Framework Programme Many of the European Union’s research activities during 1998–2002 were conducted under the European Commission’s Fifth Framework Programme. One of the features of this programme was the encouragement of closer collaboration between different disciplines both within and between the social and natural sciences. We undertook a research project for the European Commission to examine interdisciplinary integration within the Fifth Framework Programme (II-FP5). We examined a large number of themes in the Framework Programme, ranging from biological sciences (Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources) to information technology (User-friendly Information Society). Our research method included a questionnaire-based survey (with 160 responses), follow-up telephone interviews and 6 detailed case studies. The intention was to understand and learn from the experiences of interdisciplinarity from within these projects including how the research consortium was developed, project management and general experiences of running cross-disciplinary projects. Several of the examples and quotes used in this book, particularly in chapters 3 and 4, have been taken from this research project. Source: Tait et al. 2002; Bruce et al. 2004. approach, or it might arise in the context of working with stakeholder groups or end-user groups. A host of different variables will shape the project design, with the envisioned project falling at different points of the ranges for each one. These variables, some of which we will discuss briefl y here, include: ● ‘strength’ or level of interdisciplinarity; ● focus versus multi-dimensional scope of the problem; ● level of connectivity with prospective users; ● duration; ● size of team; ● number of disciplines; ● number of institutions, number of countries; ● maturity of relationships (including pre-existing collaborations) among team members. BOOK.indb 27 02/06/11 7:24 PM 28 INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNEYS Some studies of large-scale interdisciplinary initiatives suggest that ‘ collaboration-readiness’ for an initiative can be teased apart by looking at multi- ple factors including ‘contextual-environmental’ conditions (such as institutional resources, proximity), ‘intrapersonal characteristics’ (such as leadership or ori- entation of research) and ‘interpersonal factors’ (such as size, spectrum of dis- ciplines and prior history of collaboration) (Stokols et al . 2005; Stokols et al . 2008a; Hall et al . 2008). In deciding if or how to pursue interdisciplinarity, it might help when con- ceptualizing the research design to use a visual device in the form of a spider plot (Figure 3.1), for example, in order to prompt discussion amongst team members about the degree of interdisciplinarity and/or collaboration readiness, and how the design might infl uence the conduct of, and outcomes from, the project. By identifying a number of factors relevant to the success of the project (some of which are illustrated in Figure 3.1) and attempting to quantify these, where possible, this may help team leaders and others to conceptualize the research design and assess its strengths and weaknesses. Inherent in the term ‘interdisciplinary’ is a concept of degree or strength of interdisciplinarity. Projects may have some integration of disciplines result- ing in a small degree of interdisciplinarity, or ‘weak’ interdisciplinarity. Other projects may have disciplines deeply embedded with each other (and this will often be true of academically oriented interdisciplinary projects as described in chapter 2), giving a high degree of interdisciplinarity, or ‘strong’ interdiscipli- narity. Even within a particular project, it is quite feasible for research teams to start with weak forms of interdisciplinarity and move to stronger forms as the partners begin to understand the potential contribution of different disciplines more clearly. The term ‘interdisciplinary research’ covers an array of different approaches. As explained in chapter 2, problem-focused interdisciplinary research projects will bring together unique teams for periods of a few months to a few years; they strength of interdisciplinarity 5 maturity of relationships
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