Late to the Party: Articulating Time and Care in Interdisciplinary Projects

Abstract

This article explores the disjunctures and “catch-up” work of developing relationships and getting a sense of the project as community and intellectual venture as a “fill-in” social scientist added late to a large, complex interdisciplinary project. Based on two years of intermittent interactions (live and virtual) and tracking the communications of the group, from grant proposal formulation through the first year of the award, I describe how time operates in several registers: idiosyncratic, disciplinary, institutional, and epistemic. How these registers intersect with and without friction is an unexamined issue in studies of interdisciplinarity. It is more than “time management,” although that is a significant coordination challenge for project leadership. But the (dis)articulations of registers also trace the hierarchicalization of disciplines and practices in ways that challenge effective interdisciplinarity and program goals of inclusivity.