What is Interdisciplinary Study?

Interdisciplinary study is required when one moves beyond disciplinary boundaries and attempts to use knowledge from different specialties to answer a big question or tackle a complex problem. A specialist is someone who is an expert on something specific. Sometimes specific knowledge is too narrow or focused: questions about any large complex system arise that don't have answers in particular special areas. In these cases you need to integrate that knowledge into something that transcends the knowledge of individual specialties. Imagine broader or more complex issues like those involving social justice or healthcare policy. Imagine trying to solve a problem that has many dimensions and impacts individuals or communities in multiple ways. A solution might require different perspectives and different kinds of expertise. Imagine creating a marketing campaign for new technology. You will need to have some expertise in marketing and communication, as well as a good understanding of the technology involved. Disciplinary knowledge is essential, but some integration of knowledge from across different disciplines is required.

We distinguish disciplinary work from multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity.

How we organize knowledge is largely reflected in the organization of universities, colleges and departments. Natural sciences are distinguished from social sciences, and these from the arts and the humanities. Within the sciences we distinguish physics from chemistry from biology. Within the humanities we find English, History, Languages, and Philosophy. Professional programs--found largely in business, education and nursing colleges, for example--are distinguished from programs in the arts and letters and sciences. 

Courses typically have prefixes that indicate their disciplinary or programmatic home, (BIO for biology; PHI for philosophy) and the programs that are available for you to major or minor in often have a specific disciplinary or professional focus.

Disciplines are communities of scholars who, with a common vocabulary and conceptual framework, address a common set problems or research questions. Roughly speaking, physicists study the world at the level of atoms (and smaller); psychologists study the world at the level of individuals, while sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists look at social phenomena. But it is not just the subject matter that distinguishes disciplines. These communities share interests, agree upon values and expectations for their research and publications, and embrace a common set of methodologies. Across disciplines favored methodologies might differ, which is why some majors require calculus and others statistics, and some restrict research to quantifiable measures while others emphasize qualitative research. 

Moving from one discipline to another can be like moving from one culture to another. While there is much to be found in common, they often also present different perspectives and different ways of talking, thinking and working.

While over the past several centuries there has been a movement toward increasing specialization--and a growing number of disciplines and subdisciplines to match--increased knowledge has also led us to address problems of greater complexity, more data, and more tools of analysis and evaluation. There is also a growing concern for ways in which to apply knowledge: universities as well as commercial and industrial research labs are looking for ways to apply abstract theoretical knowledge to practical and socially relevant problems.

Concerns about organizing education solely around disciplinary knowledge arise when we identify problems, questions, or issues that fall outside the boundaries, between the cracks, at the blurred edges of traditional disciplinary units. These concerns give way to different kinds of research and educational programs that are known as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary.

In multidisciplinary study specialists maintain their distinct disciplinary perspectives, knowledge and methods but work together on a problem or issue. If you want to study poverty, you might consult different experts from different disciplines. What does the sociologist say? What about the political scientist or the economist? You can also learn more about poverty by studying literature or history. Because disciplines create specialists, this knowledge is essential to understanding the problems of poverty. Each discipline makes a contribution, but knowledge from different disciplines is not integrated; you have only a number of distinct silos of information. 

One can see that poverty is not just a sociological problem or a political problem, though each discipline has something valuable to contribute. In interdisciplinary study specialists work to address problems or topics that sit between or overlap the disciplinary perspectives. Knowledge from different disciplines is usually integrated or synthesized to bring about a response to the problem or question that is not unique to a specific discipline. We can see how this would work on problems surrounding poverty. If you want to understand poverty and consider solutions (policies or community activity), you would need to have some knowledge for different disciplines that you integrate into larger point of view. To take another example, computer scientists, biologists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers work together to integrate their insights on questions about the brain and thinking in neuroscience. The problem, "What is thinking," is not something unique to one discipline but requires the synthesis of knowledge from different disciplines. Interdisciplinarity is multidisciplinarity plus intentional integration or synthesis to form a larger perspective from more specific disciplinary perspectives.

Definitions of interdisciplinarity tend to focus on the problem as something that is not fully addressed by a single discipline or a problem that exists at the intersection of two or more disciplines. Though not radically different from interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity is often defined in terms of resultant work and product. Transdisciplinary work transcends or radically transforms the work in individual disciplines. There is integration but also something new emerging from the integrated research. Some versions of transdisciplinarity call for one to go beyond disciplines--a kind of break down of the disciplinary structure--to create a "unity of knowledge." Another version looks to "trans-sector problem solving" and the application of integrated knowledge to problems or issues found in the community outside of the academy. Imagine trying to solve a problem in population health with knowledge from biologists, sociologists, political scientists (all from the university) and professional healthcare workers and community members (who are not members of the university).

Though definitions vary, there are some core attributes of transdisciplinary work common to nearly all definitions. According to most discussions, the transdisciplinary thinker: 

• • Transcends disciplinary boundaries. 

  • Engages with real-world practice in the community; is never purely theoretical. 

  • Pulls together researchers, creators, and practitioners around a large idea, problem, or theme. 

  • Complements but does not replace disciplinary work

Work in our program requires you to integrate knowledge from different disciplines. Once you identify the problem or question you want to address, you will need to acquire some expertise in particular disciplinary areas related to that problem. Disciplinary knowledge often comes with a particular worldview or perspective, a set of concepts and a vocabulary used to articulate the problems and the theories, and methods designed to acquire new information and to test hypotheses. You will need to integrate or synthesize the information from these different world views.

Examples of topics or areas that clearly call for inter- or transdisciplinary study

• • Environmental Sustainability

  • Neuroscience

  • Public Health

  • Religious Studies

  • Urban Studies

  • Women's Studies

• Augsburg, T. (2006). Becoming Interdisciplinary: An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Studies (2 edition). Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall Hunt Publishing. Chapter One.

• Klein, J. T. (1993). Blurring, cracking, and crossing: Permeation and the fracturing of discipline. Knowledges: Historical and critical studies in disciplinarity, 185-211.

• Newell, W. H., & Green, W. J. (1982). Defining and teaching interdisciplinary studies. Improving College and University Teaching, 30(1), 23-30. 

• Weingart, P. (2010). A Short History of Knowledge Formations. In J. T. Klein & C. Mitcham (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (pp. 3–14). Oup Oxford.