Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity – creating maps for the maze and our labyrinth

Keisha Taylor Wesselink, SHAPE-ID Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, reflects on her own journey through the 'labyrinth' of interdisciplinarity and her efforts to map this space for the SHAPE-ID project.

On the exhaustion of the interdisciplinary scholar

Jennifer Edmond, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at Trinity College Dublin, co-director of the Trinity Centre for Digital Humanities and President of the Board of Directors of the pan-European research infrastructure for the arts and humanities, DARIAH-EU, writes of the expectation on interdisciplinary scholars to constantly defend the value of their work.

Public humanities and interdisciplinarity – laying the groundwork in the classroom

Niamh NicGhabhann, Assistant Dean, Research, for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in the University of Limerick and Chair of the Irish Humanities Alliance from September 2020, discusses how undergraduate and postgraduate education in the public humanities can help build interdisciplinary capacity in higher education.

Pathways to Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences integration: a policymaker’s perspective on bridging the research-policy gap

Mary Doyle, Public Policy Fellow at the Trinity Long Room Hub and and former Deputy Secretary General in the Department of Education and Skills of the Irish Government addresses the challenge of improving AHSS integration pathways in inter- and transdisciplinary research from a policymaker’s perspective.

Universities need to change, can change and are changing

Gemma O'Sullivan from Trinity College Dublin and CHARM-EU reflects on the challenges of explaining what it means to be transdisciplinary and the experiences of building transdisciplinary Knowledge Creating Teams as part of the CHARM-EU European University Alliance.

Missions for Urban Sustainability Education: Insights from the 3rd SHAPE-ID Workshop

The third SHAPE-ID learning case workshop took place in Turin on 17-18 February and was a collaboration with the TrUST project (Transdisciplinarity for Urban Sustainability Transition) at Politecnico di Torino. Here we present some early insights from the workshop, which explored inter- and transdisciplinary educational approaches that support sustainable urban transition..

Inter- and transdisciplinary research – now more than ever

The need for inter- and transdisciplinary research (IDR/TDR) is increasingly bringing new challenges to academic life and presenting new demands for research policy and funding. Here we reflect on some highlights from our survey with inter- and transdisciplinary researchers.

Environmental Humanities perspectives on integrating the Arts and Humanities into inter- and transdisciplinary research: Insights from the second SHAPE-ID workshop

The second SHAPE-ID Learning Case Workshop gathered experienced researchers from the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) together with funders, policy makers and representatives from other international bodies. By bringing an environmental humanities lens to bear on interdisciplinary collaborations, we hoped to learn more about potential enablers to facilitate AHSS integration in inter- and transdisciplinary research.

How can the Arts and Humanities position themselves as leaders in societal challenges research? Insights from the first SHAPE-ID workshop

Between December 2019 and May 2020, we are organising six learning case workshops in cities around Europe to learn directly from stakeholders’ experience in doing inter- and transdisciplinary research on a wide range of challenges. Our first workshop was designed to explore how the Arts and Humanities in particular could position themselves as leaders in research addressing societal challenges.

Disentangling inter- and transdisciplinarity: some insights and first results from SHAPE-ID

One of SHAPE-ID’s first objectives is to identify, through an evidence-scanning exercise drawing on existing work, the different understandings and factors that help or hinder interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research (IDR and TDR) within and between Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) and STEMM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine). This blog post summarises the preliminary findings of the SHAPE-ID literature review to date, which is also available as a report.

Multiple Perspectives are Needed to Address the World’s Most Complex Problems

Dr Angela Butler from Trinity College Dublin discusses the interdisciplinary challenges addressed by the Global Humanities Institute on the Crises of Democracy at a Summer Institute in Dubrovnik in July 2019.

International Transdisciplinarity Conference 2019

Prof Julie Thompson Klein of Wayne State University and Td-Lab ETH Zurich reflects on the 2019 International Transdisciplinarity Conference, which took place September 10th through 13th in Gothenburg, Sweden.