Interdisciplinarity Study Group

This meeting involves a small group of colleagues who have particular interests in interdisciplinary research, teaching, and scholarship. The focus of individual interest may be primarily intellectual and theoretical, or it may be related to the design of specific research projects or courses for students, or it may concern management and institutional arrangements.

At its first meeting, we addressed three questions:

• Is the theme “interdisciplinarity” of significance to us?
• Are there (and need there be) particular ‘outcomes’ which might arise from some continuing discussion/seminar on interdisciplinarity?
• If we wish to do so, how might we continue to explore the theme?

The idea of interdisciplinarity is deeply embedded in UCL’s history. Set up as a radical alternative to Oxford and Cambridge, UCL has always sought to embrace “a variety of approaches to research, (c)hallenging the boundaries of knowledge” with “creative individual researchers from diverse disciplines.” (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/profile/)

“Interdisciplinarity” is also a buzzword at the moment. There is a popular notion that interdisciplinary research is what is needed to promote, and to solve the problems associated with, the globalised economy. As knowledge is increasingly seen as a commodity of the “knowledge economy”, interdisciplinary perspectives enable us to put together different knowledges to solve real problems.

Over the last few decades, however, the very idea of the discipline (and hence interdisciplinarity) has been challenged by so-called post-modern perspectives on the nature of knowledge. According to such views, all so-called disciplines are so fragmented that to define any subject field as a discipline is arbitrary. Hence all study could be viewed as being interdisciplinary or – what comes to the same thing for them – non-disciplinary.

Depending on what perspective we adopt, we could see interdisciplinarity as a radical and intellectual challenge to come to new understandings of knowledge, theory and hence the curriculum; a pragmatic response to the rapid increase in knowledge; or as a notion that makes no sense now that disciplines and the “grand theories” which they express, are dead.

Consequently, “interdisciplinary” courses and research projects can be, for staff and students, highly challenging encounters between different ways of thinking; different types of expertise bolted together to meet (often commercially defined) problem solving needs; or as a term which could equally be used to describe any intellectual work as we attempt to understand the essentially fragmented nature of knowledge.

Terms like ‘interdisciplinary’, ‘multidisciplinary’ and ‘nondisciplinary’ might be used to represent these different viewpoints. But such terms are often used loosely. Given the prominence that interdisciplinary groupings have at UCL, some more sustained enquiry into this theme might be helpful.

The following UCL colleagues are currently members of this group:

Robert Biel, Development Planning Unit
Hasok Chang, Science and Technol. Studies
Adrian Chown, Education and Professional Development
Helen Glanville, History of Art
Stephen Gage, The Bartlett
Christine Hawley, Architecture, Building, Env. Design and Planning
Cecil Helman, Primary Care & Pop. Studies
Tim Mathews, French
Richard Meakin & Debbie Kirklin, Medical Humanities Unit
Arthur Miller, Science and Technol. Studies
Rebecca Spang, History
Paul Taylor, Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education
Brian Hurwitz, Arts and Medicine, English Dept, KCL
Tony Gardner-Medwin, Physiology

These people have all have an interest in the theme, represent a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and interests, and are, I feel, a small enough for the group to make some progress at its discussions.

Stephen Rowland
February 2001
(updated June 03)