Many PhD projects are ‘born interdisciplinary’. Equally, there is an increasing value attached to the interdisciplinary theme in the research funding community and public debate. Regardless hereof the tools and skills for thinking about interdisciplinary research designs have not been addressed and developed sufficiently amongst PhD students. The course is therefore motivated by this gap, targeting PhD students with projects that are interdisciplinary either as a key feature of their initial design (‘born interdisciplinary’), or the ones that incrementally moves towards this as a function of an emerging awareness to the importance of an expanded research design during the process (‘becoming interdisciplinary’). Next to this existing gap in interdisciplinary research skills the course is motivated by an observation made over several years, namely that different scientific disciplines only is one level of needed cross-fertilization. Another is the ability to move more effortless across different methods, either in order to triangulate, or simply because of the nature of the research question. The so-called ‘problem-based-learning’ (PBL) research model need to take an interdisciplinary approach that includes actual scientific disciplines and their theoretical and conceptual apparatuses, as well as the multitude of methods of relevance to complex and real-life research questions. Finally, the course is motivated by an interest in bringing such an increased interdisciplinary awareness and skill-development in sync with the requirements for contemporary research dissemination and communication.
Ole B. Jensen (Aalborg University)
At the end of the course, participants should be able to:
Online. The course utilizes literature studies, lecture formats, writing exercise, and plenary discussions. The course takes point of departure in the participant’s own PhD projects and insert these in a framework for critical and creatively thinking about interdisciplinary research in relation to field of study, methods, and research communication.
The successfully completion of the course requires active participation and presence during the course. In particular the willingness to challenge habitual and taken-for-granted perceptions and practices related to ‘how one normally do research’ will be acknowledged in the assessment.
Opening in October 2022.
smarter_academy@ua.pt