Next Events:
3rd Action Workshop 1-2 Nov 2016 – Tallinn, Interdisciplinary Futures Conference, 19-20, Jan 2017 – Lisbon, 1st Training School, 13-17 Feb 2017 – Barcelona
Intrepid News
Call for Applications is now open!! Barcelona Training School on inter and transdisciplinary urban research.
1st Intrepid Training School will take place in Barcelona from 13-16 February 2017. The Training School will…
New Intrepid Members Publications Section
Please send us any publication, report or blog that you have authored and which directly…
Let’s build and expand Intrepid stakeholder’s network
INTREPID COST Action aims to bring together communities of researchers, urban policy-makers, practitioners and funding agencies,…
Interdisciplinary Futures: *Open the Social Sciences…* 20 Years Later
We welcome proposals from scholars active in a variety of research fields, from history and…
New web section: Intrepid STSM's Blog
Intrepid Short Term Scientific Missions (STSM) are almost completed. Check lastest post from our Intrepid…
Let’s co-create a visual library on inter/transdisciplinarity!
Intrepid COST Action is looking for photos that represent interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Thanks for…
Announcements
24 – 25 November: A New Politics of the City: Developing Interdisciplinary Understandings of Cities, Urbanization and Human Settlements
Leeds Humanities Research Institute, University of Leeds
The workshop revolves around two presentations, one by Canadian political theorist Warran Magnusson, and another by a member of a team of Manchester economists from the Centre for Research and Sociocultural Change (CRESC). Each presentation will be followed by critical comments from invited participants. The relevant background papers will be distributed in advance. We especially invite scholars from engineering, environmental and social sciences, history and humanities who are all working in their own ways on subjects related to “the urban” into the same room to discuss and debate.
While all are welcome, we aim for an intimate enough event where ideas can really be workshopped, so sign up soon as places are limited.
Transdisciplinarity is key to sustainable urban futures: David Simon and Susan Parnell
Both members of INTREPID’s International Advisory Board are co-authors in McPhearson et al (2016) Scientists must have a say in the future of cities, Nature, 538, 165-6
“Support transdisciplinary research and synthesis. Communities with relevant knowledge must guide urban-development policy over the short and long term. Transdisciplinary research must be supported through new sources of urban science funding and organizations. Existing knowledge should be synthesized and fed into policymaking at all levels.”
SHEILA JASANOFF: FRAMING RESEARCH WITH CITIZENS’ PERSPECTIVES
Research without society’s input lacks balance
Sheila Jasanoff is director of the program on science, technology and society at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. She is one of the world-expert on dissecting what’s in the mind of scientists when they take decisions about their research.
She often likes to strike a discordant note when speaking with scientists. As she did at ESOF2016 in Manchester, UK, where Euroscientist met her in July. In this interview, she warns that regulatory bodies alone cannot take decisions on thorny issues, such how to regulate gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, without involving society at large. She believes consulting citizens is a priority, even before framing the scientific problem.
How Far Can Scholarly Networks Go? Examining the Relationships Between Distance, Disciplines, Motivations, and Clusters
By: Guang Ying Mo, Zack Hayat and Barry Wellman
This study aims to understand the extent to which scholarly networks are connected both in person and through information and communication technologies, and in particular, how distance, disciplines, and motivations for participating in these networks interplay with the clusters they form. The focal point for our analysis is the Graphics, Animation and New Media Network of Centres of Excellence (GRAND NCE), a Canadian scholarly network in which scholars collaborate across disciplinary, institutional, and geographical boundaries in one or multiple projects with the aid of information and communication technologies.
Is interdisciplinarity '‘a term that everyone invokes and none understands’?
Certainly it seems that the discourse of the interdisciplinary is everywhere. Universities are busy promoting collaborative frameworks, breaking down subject barriers; research councils invite bids for funding on wide-ranging ‘themes’; and everywhere there are ‘synergies’, ‘hubs’, and ‘centres’. Schools and departments are merged; individuals are physically relocated to work in close proximity with those from other disciplines. Horizontal networks abound. Discursively at least, the days of the disciplinary silo seem dead.
But definitions of interdisciplinarity are less easy to agree on.
Disconnected, fragmented, or united? a trans-disciplinary review of network science
Applied Network Science 2016
By Cesar Hidalgo
During decades the study of networks has been divided between the efforts of social scientists and natural scientists, two groups of scholars who often do not see eye to eye. In this review I present an effort to mutually translate the work conducted by scholars from both of these academic fronts hoping to continue to unify what has become a diverging body of literature. I argue that social and natural scientists fail to see eye to eye because they have diverging academic goals. Social scientists focus on explaining how context specific social and economic mechanisms drive the structure of networks and on how networks shape social and economic outcomes.
The use of academic research in planning practice: who, what, where, when and how?
By: Dominic Stead
The use of academic evidence in policymaking is certainly not a new issue – it has been a subject of enquiry for at least several decades. More recent is a trend of greater involvement of policy users in academic research, often based on underlying ideas that this will raise the quality of research, increase the influence of research on policymaking and/or improve the effectiveness of policymaking. Indeed, involving policy users in academic research to promote the co-creation of knowledge is an increasingly encountered requirement of research funding agencies across the world. This requirement not only places new demands and expectations on academics and policymaking professionals in the research process, it also adds to the importance of understanding the utilisation of academic research in practice.
A new report by Lord Stern raises criticisms about the treatment of interdisciplinarity by the UK system of research evaluation (RAE)
‘The disciplinary “silos” embedded in the Unit of Assessment panel’ have meant that interdisciplinary research is often ‘regarded less favourably than mono-disciplinary research’, Stern says.
Descobrimentos da Ciência da Informação: desafios da Multi, Inter e Transdisciplinaridade (MIT)
XVII Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Informação
Universidade Federal da Bahia
novembro 20, 2016 – novembro 25, 2016
Interdisciplinary Science: A Coming of Age?
By: Roderick J. Lawrence
The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine
Large global challenges, such as climate change, require a comprehensive approach, part of which should be interdisciplinary research.
Interdisciplinarity is a word à la mode, as shown by the contributions in Nature‘s special issue on the topic (September 2015). However, the collection of articles and the statistics they present confirm that interdisciplinary science is still not mainstream: it is still rarely supported by funders of scientific research despite the increasing number of calls for interdisciplinary projects, it is still rarely taught in higher education curricula, and it is still not recognized by many academic institutions. Indeed interdisciplinary research is considered by many to be contradictory to the basic principles of the production of scientific knowledge.
Imagine shaping your future
Author: Olivia Bina
An inquiry into how art and science can at times disagree about our future, and why it matters
Science and research agendas are an exercise in future thinking. They help to shape futures by planning to create the knowledge that will bring about desired change and transformation. For this reason, research policy, matters.
Interdisciplinary research has consistently lower funding success
Nature, June 2016
By Lindell Bromham, Russell Dinnage & Xia Hua
Interdisciplinary research is widely considered a hothouse for innovation, and the only plausible approach to complex problems such as climate change. One barrier to interdisciplinary research is the widespread perception that interdisciplinary projects are less likely to be funded than those with a narrower focus.
Innovative Approaches to Interdisciplinarity in Planning Education - Building Capacity to Respond to Interconnected Contemporary Planning Challenges
AIM OF THE PRIZE
Teaching in the broad field of planning is one of the main activities of AESOP Member Schools. Thus, in 2002, AESOP introduced a prize (http://www.aesop planning.eu/en_GB/excellence-in-teaching) which recognizes and encourages Excellence in Teaching. Through this award, AESOP celebrates and disseminates innovative practices in teaching in its Member Schools.
CALL FOR PAPERS: Nurturing solidarity in diversity: an interdisciplinary colloquium
University of Antwerp, November 23-24 2016
Keynote speakers
- Halleh Ghorashi (Full Professor in Diversity and Integration, Free University of Amsterdam)
- Sharon Todd (Full Professor in Education and Interculturalism, Maynooth University)
- Jonathan Darling (Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Manchester)
- Roberto Gonzales (Assistant Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education)
Joint Call of the JPI Urban Europe, supported by the European Commission
JPI Urban Europe’s fourth call – the ERA-NET Cofund Smart Urban Futures (ENSUF) – supported by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme, is open as of December 16.
Three call topics are defined:
- Concepts and strategies for smart urban transformation, growth and shrinkage
- New dynamics of public services
- Inclusive, vibrant and accessible urban communities
COST Actions are considered "highly interdiscplinary"
The first 40 Actions funded under the COST Association show a highly interdisciplinary nature, with almost half of the Actions being related to two or three main OECD fields of Science and Technology.
Nature's special issue on Interdisciplinarity
Nature’s special issue probes how scientists and social scientists are coming together to solve the grand challenges of energy, food, water, climate and health. This special scrutinizes the data on interdisciplinary work and looks at its history, meaning and funding.