The challenge of interdisciplinary research

Abstract

This keynote presentation will explore the challenges of interdisciplinary research. In an era when universities and research authorities call on us to work across and among disciplines for research and publishing, we suffer from institutional structures, funding patterns, and journal policies that make this nearly impossible. The presentation will propose ways in which individuals and local communities of practice can meet the challenges of interdisciplinary research in fruitful ways. It will also ask whether we can develop similar initiatives as a scale large enough to transform the institutional and programmatic systems that work against us. Several examples of humble theory will illustrate this talk. In one case, a dog fails to solve the theory of the doorknob while shedding light on interdisciplinary research. In another case, a dog develops a workaround for opposable thumbs while learning to harvest raspberries.