Investigating Interdisciplinary Collaboration : Theory and Practice Across Disciplines

Interdisciplinarity has become a buzzword in academia, as research universities funnel their financial resources toward collaborations between faculty in different disciplines. In theory, interdisciplinary collaboration breaks down artificial divisions between different departments, allowing more innovative and sophisticated research to flourish. But does it actually work this way in practice?  

 

Investigating Interdisciplinary Collaboration puts the common beliefs about such research to the test, using empirical data gathered by scholars from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The book’s contributors critically interrogate the assumptions underlying the fervor for interdisciplinarity. Their attentive scholarship reveals how, for all its potential benefits, interdisciplinary collaboration is neither immune to academia’s status hierarchies, nor a simple antidote to the alleged shortcomings of disciplinary study. 

Chapter 10 is available Open Access here (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK395883)

SCOTT FRICKEL is an associate professor of sociology and environment and society at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He is author of Chemical Consequences: Environmental Mutagens and the Rise of Genetic Toxicology and coeditor of The New Political Sociology of Science and Fields of Knowledge.

 

MATHIEU ALBERT is an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and a scientist in the Wilson Centre for Research in Education at the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. 

 

BARBARA PRAINSACK is a professor in the department of social science, health and medicine at King’s College London in the United Kingdom. She is the author or coauthor of several books including Solidarity in Biomedicine and Beyond.