Evolution of interdisciplinary collaboration: what are stimulating conditions?

Abstract

In the past, the attention paid to interdisciplinary working focused on putting it into practice. As it turns out, this is not without problems. This paper looks closely at the development of interdisciplinary working in a longitudinal case study. Our objective is to provide insight into the evolution of interdisciplinary working in practice. We discuss a European project, known as BRAINPOoL, and deal with knowledge integration, common ground, reflexivity, bridging internal interaction, and project commitment as core aspects of interdisciplinary research. We found that these factors evolved in the case study and we also found important evolutionary conditions: facilitative leadership, professional differences, and willingness to learn and cooperate are important drivers of interdisciplinary research.

Linking qualitative scenarios with quantitative energy models: knowledge integration in different methodological designs

“…It can be defined as the blending of concepts and perspectives "to create innovative new worldviews" [53]: 299). Hinkel [44]:19 distinguishes two phases of knowledge integration: "the elaboration of a shared language" (see also [42], also defined as "common ground" by Edelenbos [54]: 454) and "the design of a methodology". A methodology consists of a combination of instruments and methods: in our case, this is the specific empirical application of the qualitative scenario method Cross-Impact Balance analysis and its link to quantitative (energy) models, including individual additional methods and techniques, researchers and data.…”

Integrating team science into interdisciplinary graduate education: an exploration of the SESYNC Graduate Pursuit

“…The increased frequency of interdisciplinary, team-based research in S-E fields and, importantly, assessments of them continually improve our understanding of the hallmarks, challenges, barriers, and conditions that facilitate effective IDR and TS (Edelenbos et al 2017;NRC 2005;Palmer et al 2016). The NRC identified seven parallel hallmarks of and challenges to effective IDR and TS initiatives: (1) member diversity, (2) knowledge integration, (3) team size, (4) goal alignment, (5) boundary permeability, (6) geographic dispersion, and (7) task interdependence (NRC 2015).…”

Transdisciplinary Processes for Sustainable Development

“…Investing sufficient time and resources for face-to-face meetings between participants in a transdisciplinary project is of fundamental importance to cultivate these high-quality relations between research groups and with external stakeholder groups. For the same reason, long-term engagement in transdisciplinary projects is argued for as developing trust and mutual understanding is a slow and tricky process (Edelenbos et al 2017). Joint field visits of researchers belonging to different disciplines, together with external stakeholders, are repeatedly mentioned as important opportunities, not only to know each other better but also to exchange contextualized information (Bouwen 2001;Dewulf et al 2005;O'Brien et al 2013).…”

“…quality of the relations between different research teams and with external stakeholders (O'Brien et al 2013;Cundill et al 2015;Lawrence 2015;Edelenbos et al 2017). Collaboration is then conceived as a process in search for synergetic solutions between different actors involved in a shared complex problem through the joint appreciation of different but complementary viewpoints (Gray 1989;Huxham and Vangen 2005;Gray and Purdy 2018).…”