Research: Study of expert interdisciplinary work
The study of expert interdisciplinary work examined perceptions and enactments of interdisciplinary research among individuals and groups working in leading research institutions. Our analysis has focused on cognitive, epistemological, and institutional conditions enabling interdisciplinary work as well as the particular challenges that researchers confront to carry out and validate their research. Included in our sample were researchers and administrators from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, the Santa Fe Institute, the Arts and Science Laboratory in New Mexico, the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technologies (CIMIT), and the Research in Experimental Designs (RED) group at XEROX-PARC.
Analysis of interview data and expert work has enabled us to understand issues such as:
- The institutional conditions that favor and hinder effective interdisciplinary collaborations.
- How expert interdisciplinary researchers define their problems of study and the strategies that allow them to integrate disciplinary views.
- The challenges and options involved in assessing the results of interdisciplinary research when individual disciplinary standards do not suffice.
- The multiple forms of cognitive conceptual blending taking place in interdisciplinary work.
Related publications:
- A Review of CIMIT: An Interdisciplinary, Inter-Institutional Enterprise.
- Review of the Santa Fe Institute: Institutional and individual qualities of expert interdisciplinary work.
- Interdisciplinary Research and Education: Preliminary Perspectives from the MIT Media Laboratory.
- Other related publications