International hubs for interdisciplinary teaching and learning

One of the pressing issues when trying to get an overview of the various methodologies for interdisciplinary communication is the abundance of methods already developed, but not gathered in one place. The methods and methodologies are developed in various local projects and research groups and scattered all over the various research fields, making it easy to get a feeling of constantly reinventing the wheel.

In order to accommodate for this, we have collected a number of links for hubs that gather various methods and provide overviews and updates on recently developed methodologies. The blogs, wikis and toolboxes listed are frequently updated and are thus good places for newcomers within the field to orient themselves.

If you know of a central resource, which is not linked here, please let us know so that we can add it to the list.

 

The td-net’s toolbox is a collection of selected methods for jointly producing knowledge across different academic and non-academic fields of expertise. The Td-net toolbox is hosted by the Swiss academy of Science and is meant for academic researchers and teachers that work in inter- and transdisciplinary ways as well as everyone who is interested to, or takes part in, co-producing knowledge together with researchers.

 

 

This is a great blog for researchers who are interested in better concepts and methods for understanding and acting on interdisciplinary and complex problems like refugee crises, global climate change. It is a community weblog, which means that various central researchers from the field of interdisciplinary studies also have contributed. The blog is run by the Integration and Implementation Sciences team at The Australian National University. The team leader is Professor Gabriele Bammer.

Read  more about Integration and Implementation Insights.

 

 

The interdisciplinary wiki is created by Professor Catherine Lyall and hosted by the Institute for Science Technology and Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

This wiki was originally developed as an online resource for the ISSTI Interdisciplinary Masterclasses, a project funded by the ESRC's Researcher Development Initiative, but now gathers a variety of different resources, including references, methods and publications on interdisciplinary provision.

 

 

The school of Liberal Arts at Utrecht university is a hotbed for many innovative interdisciplinary teaching activities. Staff from Utrecht has visited University of Copenhagen for inspiration, just as a delegation from UCPH has visited Utrecht to learn more about their interdisciplinary set-up.

Read more about Interdisciplinarity at Utrecht University.

 

 

The Interdisciplinary Studies Project is a multi-year research project at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. The project group examines the nature of interdisciplinary work conducted by researchers, funding agencies, higher education faculty and K-12 teachers working in experienced programs and institutions.

The main investigators are Howard Gardner and Veronica Boix Mansilla, who have both published extensively on issues of education and interdisciplinarity.

Read more about Interdisciplinary Studies Project - Harvard Project Zero.

 

 

AIS is a US based association, founded in. Their scope and views on interdisciplinarity is based on the American liberal arts tradition, which influences the way interdisciplinary studies and education is perceived. However, the association is becoming increasingly international and in 2016, the annual conference was for the first time held outside the US. In 2019 the conference will be hosted by the University of Amsterdam.

The AIS newsletter (Integrative Pathways) and journal (Issues in interdisciplinary studies), in addition to their resource and materials database are good venues for an updated overview of debates on interdisciplinary studies.

 

 

Duke University in North Carolina, US has a large interdisciplinary studies and research programme, and is one of the leading universities on interdisciplinarity in the US. For inspiration and examples of how to set up new programmes, activities and research collaborations, this is a great site to visit.

Interdisciplinarity beyond Duke is a weekly collection of interdisciplinary news stories from around the world, currently curated by a student enrolled at Duke.

 

 

The Toolbox-project is developed by Professor Michael O’Rourke and his team at Michigan State University. The project is a philosophical yet practical enhancement to cross-disciplinary, collaborative science. It is created in the form of a dialogue-based “Toolbox workshop”, and it is intended for interdisciplinary and interprofessional teams of collaborators. Rooted in philosophical analysis, the Toolbox workshops enable cross-disciplinary collaborators to engage in a structured dialogue about their research assumptions.

The Toolbox-project website offers video introductions, guidelines as well as case descriptions on how to benefit from the Toolbox initiative.

Read more about The Toolbox-project.