SHAPE-ID : Shaping Interdisciplinary Practices in Europe
SHAPE-ID project members have developed a series of tailored collaborative tools in the form of checklists designed to help individuals and teams consider the most important issues when developing, designing, funding or collaborating on an IDR/TDR project. These can be downloaded as PDF documents and also be used in conjunction with our Top Ten Tips.
One of the key scholars working in this field, Julie Thompson Klein, gives an overview of how to think about interdisciplinarity in this video of her plenary talk at the I2s conference in 2014.
There are several large (and not very well linked) literatures on how to define inter- and trans-disciplinary, as well as related terms such as collaborative research, team science and AHSS integration. For this toolkit, we have produced two short annotated bibliographies to introduce newcomers to a set of key texts from a range of these different literatures.The first of these presents key readings from the academic literature, organised according to the goals categories used in this toolkit.
The second SHAPE-ID annotated bibliography presents key recommended readings from the policy literature.
Bianca Vienni Baptista and Christian Pohl have produced a heuristic tool that can be used by groups to reflect on the shared understandings of ID/TD present in a team, funding call or project/program. This tool takes the form of a set of questions to reflect on the different definitions of ID/TD used in particular contexts and their implications. [COMING SOON]
Participation in inter- and trans-disciplinary research is currently less common among arts and humanities scholars and practitioners than it is among social scientists. Because of this, less has been written about what the arts and humanities can bring to inter- and trans-disciplinary research. Keri Facer and Kate Pahl address this gap in their 2017 book exploring the value of collaborative research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Their edited collection includes voices and perspectives from researchers and practitioners in a wide range of arts and humanities disciplines, and beyond.
In many sciences, research is often conducted in large teams. Efforts to improve such ways of working have developed into an approach known as the Science of Team Science (SciTS) and a toolkit of Team Science resources that are publically available.
This Open Access article describes another important set of resources for those interested in working across disciplines and between different sectors of society described in this Open Access article
Because the labels inter- and trans-disciplinary research cover such a wide spectrum of activities, individuals can have very diverse motives for undertaking such research. These can range from a very pragmatic desire to meet the criteria of a funding call to links with other disciplines or sectors that have organically evolved when working on a particular topic.
In this short talk, Myra Strober describes the need to ‘design for interdisciplinarity’ in order to work collaboratively on solutions for complex problems
Catherine Lyall conducted a series of interviews with established researchers. In Chapter 2 of her book, she describes two contrasting motivations for undertaking this type of research: a problem-solving approach highlighting the capacity of IDR to address real world issues versus individual career approach highlighting how IDR can broaden an individual’s horizons.
Approaches from the arts, humanities and social sciences can: allow us to understand the complexity of behaviour and identities; challenge or disrupt accepted ideas; enable a focus on discourses, narratives and representations; enhance reflexivity; foster intercultural and intergenerational dialogue; provide critical, ethical and historical perspectives; and reframe problems to centre on human experience.
Trinity College Dublin has produced a short video on the role that arts and humanities can play in interdisciplinary research.
And this blogpost from the Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities highlights the contributions of history, folklore and medieval studies to wider research, concluding that interdisciplinarity is ‘a vital component of 21st century academia.’
The UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) produced a report outlining arts and humanities contributions to research on the environment.
It also produced a report on the findings of the Cultural Value Project which examined the value of the arts and culture to individuals and society.
The Irish Research Council’s Creative Connections Synthesis report outlines the results of a series of workshops designed to bring researchers in STEM together with researchers in AHSS.
The League of European Research Universities (LERU) published an account of the role of the creative arts in research universities.
This report evaluates the Wellcome Trust’s Sciart scheme, which funded collaborations between artists and biomedical researchers.
This chapter of the Valuing Nature report looks at the role of art in environmental research.
To provide further concrete ideas about the ways in which AHSS researchers and creative practitioners can contribute to inter- and trans- disciplinary research, we have given some examples of past and current projects below.
The artists-in-labs program at the Zurich University of the Arts has been facilitating artistic research by way of long-term residencies for artists in scientific laboratories and research institutes, promoting sustainable collaboration between artists and scientists of all disciplines
Collective Wisdom is a first-of-its-kind field study of the media industry, which examines how people co-create within communities, across disciplines, and with algorithms
netCommons is a Horizon2020 research project, which follows a novel transdisciplinary methodology on treating network infrastructure as commons, for resiliency, sustainability, self-determination, and social integration.
The SHAPE-ID team have also written a series of new case studies on Arts and Humanities-led interdisciplinary projects. This one focuses on the role of chickens in contemporary and historical human lives.
This case study produced by the SHAPE-ID team presents SIENNA, a Horizon 2020 project on Artificial Intelligence and ethics.
The SHAPE-ID team have also written a short case study on the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Science in Culture funding theme.
SHAPE-ID has collaborated with the Irish Research Council to develop a case study on their funding supports for inter- and disciplinary research capacity building and AHSS leadership in ID/TD research.
This SHAPE-ID case study presents the journey of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute to illustrate how a University Arts and Humanities Research Institute can build a culture supportive of inter- and trans-disciplinary research.
