Introductory Remarks

The literature on interdisciplinary research, teaching, and administration has blossomed in recent decades. There is, as might be expected, a fair degree of consensus around certain critical issues and continuing debate regarding others. In this section of our website we strive to both identify areas of consensus and stimulate discussion of areas of contention. We appreciate that consensus does not imply unanimity, and that some may disagree with some of what is said here. We invite comments from all who visit this site (send them to rszostak@ualberta.ca). Our goal is to achieve as broad a consensus as possible. As an organization we have always welcomed all scholars and students with an interest in interdisciplinarity. Yet our guiding principle has long been the integration of diverse insights. In this section of our website we thus strive to represent consensus while respecting diversity.

We stress that we do not want to turn interdisciplinarity into a discipline. We do, however, wish to professionalize interdisciplinary practice. Most practicing interdisciplinarians are keenly aware of the limitations of disciplinary methodologies and do not want to reduce the freedom inherent in interdisciplinarity. This concern can only be addressed by showing that freedom can be maintained while outlining definitions and best practices. That is our intent. It is useful in this regard to appreciate that disciplinary methodologies constrain us in particular ways: limiting the things studied and theories and methods employed. The definitions and best practices outlined below would neither cause nor encourage interdisciplinary research or teaching to be limited in these ways. It could well be that many ‘best practices’ will prove more useful for some interdisciplinary projects than others.

We have tried to be brief. Each of the ideas presented in this website has been addressed in greater detail in various publications. We provide references throughout.

A recent book by Gabriele Bammer has broadly similar goals and motivation to this website (but also important differences). See Bammer's Disciplining Interdisciplinarity