Introductory description

In an increasingly complex and changing world, researchers inside and outside the academy are constantly facing challenges that require collaborating and thinking across and beyond disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinary skills are said to improve not only creativity and critical thinking but also academic performance and employability. But what is interdisciplinarity?

The module will combine an introduction to a range of theoretical and methodological approaches to interdisciplinary research with a critical evaluation of the challenges and advantages of working across and in-between disciplines and practices through the discussion of cases and examples.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Lecture themes:

Week 1: What is a discipline? What is interdisciplinarity? Histories of interdisciplinarity in theory and practice

Week 2: Changing knowledge infrastructures, the knowledge economy and the internalization of science by society. A critical consideration of problem spaces, wicked problems, the politics of openness, and the politics of collaborative research and the participatory condition.

Week 3: Inter-, multi-, cross-, trans–interdisciplinary research, and the politics of interdisciplinarity

Week 4: Questions of methodology, epistemology, ethics and practice – including geo-politics of methodology

Weeks 5-9 (Week 6 – reading week)
Explorations of key concepts or ‘ways of knowing’ in the Masters’ programmes in CIM as forms of interdisciplinary research. Examples might include: participation, the environment, mapping, sound, personalisation, complexity, AI, trust, interface design.

Week 10
Conclusion: What are the values of interdisciplinarity?

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Take initiative in their own learning.
• Design and develop a structured essay plan.
• Think critically about a particular area of study.
• Systematically evaluate and synthesise research in a particular area of study.
• Demonstrate their learning through a written and structured essay.

Indicative reading list

Reading lists can be found in Talis

Research element

Students will need to conduct a literature search to complete the assessment. They will also need to develop an original analysis of this literature.

Interdisciplinary

The subject of the module is interdisciplinarity, and will provide students with knowledge about different (inter-)disciplinary approaches to interdisciplinarity.

International

The approaches to interdisciplinarity discussed will include those that situate interdisciplinarity in relation to different national cultures of research, as well as considering the challenge to conducting international research, including those relating to language, data protection and issues of epistemic authority.

Subject specific skills

An advanced understanding of the values and practice of interdisciplinary research that will enable students to evaluate different claims to knowledge.

Transferable skills

An advanced understanding of different approaches to interdisciplinary practice that students can apply to conducting research in diverse social, disciplinary and professional contexts.