Careers in Interdisciplinarity

Lyall, Catherine; Bruce, Ann; Tait, Joyce. Laura Meagher, Interdisciplinary Research Journeys.Huntingdon, GBR: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2011, ch.6 [available at: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/Interdisciplinary-Research-Journeys/book-ba-9781849661782.xml ], provides several career vignettes, and a long list of questions that potential interdisciplinarians might ask themselves. The chapter does not provide detailed advice, but does note that there are interdisciplinary centers both within and beyond academia.

Lyall et al, p. 109 provides a handy table of the risks and benefits of an interdisciplinary career:

RISKS:

· Methodological confusion

· Lack of focus/clarity, danger of losing focus

· Absence of common goal (chance of some being ‘outsiders’)

· Inability to evaluate quality

· Lack of theoretical rigor and a discipline base

· Lack of integration, complexities

· Fewer outputs (e.g. fewer high quality interdisciplinary journal outlets)

· Disagreements over ownership of intellectual property, novel ideas, findings

· High risk of failure

· Bottlenecks due to interdependencies among team members (complexity of some playing key roles at different stages, with others dependent upon them)

· Wasting time on management and administration rather than doing one’s own work

· Mission drift

BENEFITS:

· Interesting, exciting and satisfying work

· Flexibility

· Diversified, larger portfolio of methodological tools

· Multiple, creative approaches (or combinations thereof) to a problem

· New perspectives, disposing of myths

· Good exercises in communicating with wider audiences (and related improvement in self-understanding)

· Real-life, practical relevance

· Improved understanding of complex phenomena

· Novel, exciting breakthroughs, achievement of complementarity

· Over the long-term, cost effectiveness due to synergies saving time and energy

Note: many benefits can be identified as the positive side of risks, e.g. high risk of failure can also imply opportunity for genuine innovation

Jessica K. Graybill and Vivek Shandas, "Doctoral student and early career academic perspectives," Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (2010), 404-18, focus on the transition from interdisciplinary graduate student to scholar, and how both graduate programs and interdisciplinary positions could be improved to facilitate this transition.

The central role that interdisciplinary scholars should play on interdisciplinary research teams is addressed under The 'Specialized Interdisciplinarian'.