Interdisciplinary Knowledge Sharing

Most of my academic career was dedicated to working on interdisciplinary research projects. In the early days, I found there was little consideration for the inherent challenges of this type of work, particularly in managing power dynamics across the STEM/social science disciplinary divide. While there is a lot to be gained from interdisciplinary research, it can be a hard road to walk. It’s so refreshing to see interdisciplinary research gaining more prominence from funders, and critically, a more intentional approach to creating supportive spaces for people to communicate across disciplinary divides. Here are some key lessons I learnt along the (sometimes rocky) journey: 🔹Language Matters: Ensure everyone on the team understands the key terms used to articulate the research. For instance, on an antimicrobial resistance project I was working on, the term ‘driver’ meant different things to different academics. Spending time interrogating this helped the team to have a shared understanding of the objectives of the project. 🔹 Regular Knowledge-Sharing Sessions: Building an understanding of what each team member is doing to contribute to the project can help to foster a positive working environment. Facilitated sessions, where each team member presents their work, can help to foster a shared understanding. For me, learning about how microbiological sampling techniques worked was helpful when developing my own ethnographic study. 🔹 Foster a Culture of Mutual Respect: Post-docs and project administration staff, often the hardest working, sometimes see their contributions rendered invisible. I cannot stress enough how vital it is to create an environment where all disciplines and team members are valued equally. Avoid empty platitudes; good leadership comes with actively listening to each other and recognising that the project wouldn’t happen without every member of the team. 🔹 Utilise Facilitation Techniques: Don’t assume that a group will naturally come together; intentional facilitation, such as round-robin discussions, ensures everyone has a chance to contribute. This can also help to manage power dynamics and give voice to quieter members. 🔹Create a Psychologically safe space: When people do not feel safe to share their ideas, they will not take risks and experiment. Safe spaces for learning are essential; public criticism and shaming can deter people from sharing. Encourage team members to explore ideas outside their comfort zones in a way that is supportive. Creating safe spaces is the only way people will experiment together. Interdisciplinary research can indeed be a hard road to walk, but the journey is enriched with diverse perspectives and the potential for groundbreaking discoveries. It's about managing the complexities with care and ensuring every voice is heard and respected. Let's continue to push the boundaries of knowledge, together. #interdisciplinaryresearch #academicresearch #power #facilitation

 🏫Future University 🏫 In responding to one of my recent posts, Julie (JR) Rowland challenged me to envision the future university. I replied with a vision of the future university as a dynamic, decentralised physical and digital ecosystem that integrates education, work, and community service into a continuous learning journey. This new university is designed to adapt to the rapidly changing global landscape, harnessing the power of technology to make learning accessible, personalised, and directly applicable to real-world challenges. Its purpose is to foster lifelong learning, innovation, and collaboration, preparing individuals not just for today's jobs but for the challenges and opportunities of the future. Its value proposition is its ability to integrate theoretical knowledge with practical application, thereby enhancing individual capabilities, addressing societal challenges, and driving economic and social progress. Let's imagine a day in the life of a student attending this university: Maria is a learner at Future University, a global network without a traditional campus. Her day begins in her local community hub, a co-working space with advanced technology, including AI tutors, surrounded by a vibrant community of learners, mentors, and professionals from surrounding companies. Maria's morning is spent working on a project with a technology startup, part of her apprenticeship program. She's developing a sustainable energy solution, applying skills learned in her interdisciplinary studies. Her AI tutor facilitates the project, which suggests resources and learning modules based on the challenges she encounters in real time. Lunch is an opportunity for a mentorship meeting at the community hub, where Maria discusses her project's progress with her mentor, a senior engineer with global experience. They use a blockchain-based platform to record milestones and feedback, contributing to her personalised learning record. In the afternoon, Maria heads to an open innovation lab, a collaborative space where students, faculty, and industry professionals work together on research projects. Today, they're analysing data from their sustainable energy project to predict energy consumption patterns. This research is part of a larger initiative shared with partnering organisations across the globe. Maria spends her evening participating in a global skill exchange webinar, where she shares her project experiences with a global audience and learns from others working on similar projects. This platform allows her to connect with peers, enhancing her global network and exposing her to diverse perspectives. Before bed, Maria reflects on her day's learning, using her digital portfolio to document her achievements, skills and areas for growth. This portfolio, secured on the blockchain, is a comprehensive record of her lifelong learning journey, accessible to potential employers and collaborators. #futureofeducation #Highereducation

Collaboration across disciplines sounds intuitive. In practice, it is anything but simple. A recent qualitative study examining how artists, scientists and technologists work together shows that interdisciplinary collaboration about navigating fundamentally different ways of thinking, creating and validating knowledge. Participants describe collaboration as a process of “de-disciplining” themselves. Established methods, norms and hierarchies need to be temporarily suspended to make room for alternative perspectives. This is where friction emerges. Scientists may prioritise rigour and reproducibility, artists ambiguity and exploration, technologists functionality and application. What makes collaboration work is not alignment, but negotiation. Shared understanding develops through iteration, translation and, often, discomfort. Trust becomes a central variable, not only between individuals but between epistemologies. The study also points to structural constraints. Institutional settings, funding models and evaluation criteria still favour disciplinary outputs. This creates a paradox where interdisciplinary work is encouraged rhetorically but remains difficult to sustain in practice. Authors: Zeynep Birsel, Ellen Loots, Lénia Marques

"Industry Experts Penning Academic Textbooks and Research Publications in Refereed Journals": Recently, I had the incredible opportunity to chat with Mr. Rajasekhar Kandepu, an exceptional HR leader, in Mumbai. Like him, many experts from the business world are entering academia and making contributions. Practicing professionals from industry can significantly enhance the value of academic textbooks and refereed journals by integrating their practical insights and contemporary knowledge into these academic resources. While academic literature primarily comprises textbooks and refereed journals that focus on theoretical frameworks and scholarly research, the contributions of industry professionals ensure that these resources remain relevant and applicable to real-world scenarios. Their ability to provide authentic case studies and real-life examples helps bring theoretical concepts to life, making the material more engaging and relatable for students and researchers. By sharing the latest industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices, professionals help keep academic content current, thus better preparing students for the workforce. They can suggest practical exercises, projects, and problems that reflect actual industry challenges, fostering the development of essential skills. Insights into industry standards, regulations, and compliance requirements offer students and researchers a comprehensive understanding of the professional landscape. Furthermore, industry professionals can provide valuable career guidance, including advice on career paths, job market trends, and networking opportunities, which is crucial for students planning their futures. Collaborative writing efforts between professionals and academics in textbooks and journal articles result in more robust and well-rounded resources that blend theoretical rigor with practical applicability. Guest contributions, interviews, and testimonials from industry leaders add credibility and diverse perspectives, enriching the academic discourse. In reviewing drafts, industry professionals ensure that the content is accurate and relevant, offering a practical perspective that might otherwise be overlooked. This interdisciplinary collaboration ultimately enhances the quality and utility of academic literature, making it more beneficial for students, educators, and researchers alike.

WHAT IF YOUR SCIENCE TEACHER LEARNED STORYTELLING AND ART TEACHER LEARNED AI? No one wakes up and thinks, "Today, I'll solve a pure physics problem." But they do think: "How do we get clean water to this village?" That needs engineering + sociology + local wisdom. Real problems are messy. They don't respect subject boundaries. Recently I came across Gitanjali JB's story. She walked away from corporate life to co-found HIAL in Ladakh with Sonam Wangchuk. Their students don't just sit in classrooms. They fix melting glaciers using old local methods while learning science. They grow food the traditional way while understanding soil and nature. They make art about climate change. Elders teach alongside modern teachers. It's real learning, solving real problems. That's what education should feel like. This is called interdisciplinary learning. Where different fields of knowledge come together to solve real challenges. It's not about knowing everything, but about connecting the dots between what you know. We educators need to do this too. A math teacher learning storytelling. A science teacher learning design. A language teacher learning technology. With data we can see that: → 93% want workers who can solve problems using multiple subjects, not just one skill. → 65% of new jobs will need skills from science, arts, and social work mixed together. At Nanoskool, we're upskilling teachers to break these boundaries and helping them become connectors, not just subject experts. Because students who thrive tomorrow will learn from teachers who evolved today. What's one skill you learned outside your "field" that transformed how you work? #Linkedin #ai #InterdisciplinaryLearning #science #TeacherUpskilling #Edtech #STEAM #india #tech #Nanoskool 

Are We Speaking the Same Language? 💡 Insights on Interdisciplinary Science Communication A few years ago, I was asked to help scientists communicate with… each other. This surprised me a bit because I usually train researchers to engage with the public, high school students etc. But why help scientists communicate among themselves? The answer lies in the rise of interdisciplinary research: Today’s complex problems require knowledge from many different research fields, making effective communication within interdisciplinary research projects crucial. Despite limited literature on this, I took on the challenge and have since conducted numerous rewarding workshops. This autumn I moderated a workshop for Carlsberg Foundation Semper Ardens Accelerate grant holders and in later summer we had a productive ITEASc workshop in Middelfart, where PhD and master’s students developed and pitched interdisciplinary research projects. Here are some key takeaways for successful interdisciplinary research and scicomm from the workshops: 📣 Have a clear aim: Well-motivated research questions are essential. 📣 Start a dialogue, not a monologue: Listen to your audience (in this case: your peers). 📣 Be transparent: Share your uncertainties. 📣 Train in a safe environment: Positive feedback culture is important. 📣 Be playful and reflective - but hold on to your core scientific skills and projects. 📣 Have patience: Developing a common language takes time. As we learned from ITEASc keynote speaker Andreas Roepstorff, interdisciplinary work might even slow down publication rates. But we need better papers, not more papers. We need to listen more and talk/write less! So… how do we train this in a workshop? 1) We start with fun and safe activities to spark conversation. It might look chaotic in photos, but it’s well thought out :-) 2) We aim for clear end products, like poster presentations. 3) Everyone literally writes down their core scientific skills on a piece of paper and presents it to the others. Three trivial points? Yes, perhaps. But highly efficient! AND it’s fun. What more could you ask for? Here what participants said when evaluating the workshops: “The workshop was really enlightening. It provided a toolbox that I will for sure use in the future to establish collaborations and submit multidisciplinary proposals with colleagues with different backgrounds!” “It was a friendly and validating environment.” “The ice breaker gave me the feeling that this was well organised, this was something new, and this was going to be fun. It did wonders for networking throughout the day.” “Amazing ideas in 3h. I can only imagine what could we do with months!” “It significantly shaped me to a better science communicator :)”   What are your experiences – good or bad – with Interdisciplinary Science Communication?  

A three-legged stool is only stable when all three legs are the same length. Transdisciplinary research is premised on exactly this: that natural scientists, social scientists and humanists, and communities with lived experience each bring something irreplaceable — and that their collaboration, structured equitably, produces knowledge and possibilities that none could generate alone. The field has made real progress on this framing. Look across today's funding calls — participatory research, co-production, place-based approaches, community-engaged science — and transdisciplinary language is everywhere. The methodology has been adopted. But one leg still tends to shorten. In many partnerships, one leg of the stool ends up in facilitation roles rather than co-design roles: building trust, running workshops, translating science for broader audiences. Essential work — but not equal work. Not the kind of work that shapes the research questions, drives the methods, or leads the publications. A partnership where any contributor is primarily serving the others is not a transdisciplinary partnership. It's a hierarchical wolf in sheep's clothing. And yet, even a truly equitable partnership isn't enough on its own — because the legs, however equal, don't hold themselves together. The seat does. Coordination infrastructure is what transforms three capable partners into a coherent program: shared governance, common frameworks, the steady relational and intellectual labor of keeping diverse expertise oriented toward the same goals. It rarely appears in the methods section. It almost never gets its own budget line. But remove it, and you don't have a partnership. You have three separate sticks. This is where the current moment becomes urgent. Even as transdisciplinary language proliferates in funding calls, the organizations that actually provide this backbone — stewarding multi-partner cohorts, facilitating knowledge exchange, sustaining the connective tissue between research and practice — are losing resources, reducing capacity, or disbanding entirely. We are expanding the methodology while defunding the mechanism. If transdisciplinary research is going to produce lasting, transformative contributions, we need to fund the seat, not just the legs. #Transdisciplinary #SystemsChange #CoDesign #MoreThanTheSum #CommunityEngagement #Coordination

Today, I would like to share a recent article on integrating AI into education entitled "Integrating AI-generated content tools (AIGC) in higher ed: A comparative analysis of interdisciplinary learning outcomes" by Zhang and Tang (2025) (https://lnkd.in/e4mNchms ). Although AIGC tools are now widely adopted in higher ed, few studies systematically compare their impact across STEM, humanities, social sciences, business, and health fields. Zhang and Tang address this gap through a dataset that includes 1,099 students, 252 faculty members, 86 classroom observations, and both pre/post assessments and interviews across 15 institutions. Findings 1. Meaningful Gains in Interdisciplinary Learning Outcomes. When AIGC tools were strategically integrated interdisciplinary project outcomes increased 37%, measured through collaborative problem-solving, cross-domain knowledge synthesis, and peer communication. Improvements were strongest in: - Interdisciplinary communication (+23.6%) - Creativity (+17.4%) - Knowledge acquisition (+17.2%) - Skill development (+16.0%) These gains substantially exceed those typically associated with traditional EdTech tools, such as LMS. 2. Discipline-Specific Patterns Matter. The authors found that AIGC adoption varies markedly by disciplinary epistemology and instructional culture: - STEM fields show the highest usage (87% weekly), emphasizing code generation, simulation modeling, and structured prompting. - Humanities/social sciences adopt more slowly but display deeper pedagogical integration often using AIGC as a critical object of analysis. - Business and economics benefit most from AI-generated scenarios. - Medical/health sciences used for diagnostic simulations or case variation. 3. Pedagogical Design Determines Learning Quality. The study introduces a Quality of Integration Index (QII), showing that high gains correlate with: - Pedagogical coherence - Explicit alignment between AIGC use and learning outcomes - Depth of curricular integration 4. Students Treat AIGC as an Intellectual Partner. Students learn best when AIGC tools are framed not as answer generators but as collaborative partners. This aligns with emerging research on “AI-assisted sense-making,” where students refine, critique, and extend AI-generated output. Across all disciplines, the study identifies five success principles: - Faculty co-design rather than top-down tool implementation - Explicit alignment between AI capabilities and outcomes - Staged implementation with iterative refinement - Dual-track assessment (AI-assisted vs. independent work) - Transparency about AI limitations for students Institutions that followed at least four of these achieved 54% higher learning gains and 68% higher faculty satisfaction. Reference Zhang, Y., & Tang, Q. (2025). Integrating AI-generated content tools in higher ed: A comparative analysis of interdisciplinary learning outcomes. Scientific Reports, 15(25802), 1–14.

Human Performance Collaboration & Team Science We often talk about multidisciplinary work without really unpacking what it means. In team science, there are three collaboration models: multidisciplinary, where experts from different fields work side-by-side but largely remain in their own lanes; interdisciplinary, where methods and perspectives begin to cross boundaries; and transdisciplinary, the highest level of collaboration, where expertise remains intact but boundaries dissolve as ideas and problem-solving are co-created. Importantly, transdisciplinary does not mean people step outside their qualifications or perform work they aren’t trained to do. In fact, when one discipline tries to masquerade as another, it’s the highest form of disciplinary disrespect—undermining both the integrity of the field and the trust of the team. True transdisciplinary work honors expertise by connecting it at full strength, creating something entirely new that no single discipline could achieve alone. As Stokols et al. (2008) put it: “Transdisciplinary collaborations are intended to transcend disciplinary boundaries by creating new frameworks, hypotheses, and methods that integrate and extend beyond the contributions of individual fields.” That’s the model of collaboration where performance and innovation truly thrive.

Launching a new series: #PhDHindsight 🎓 Every Thursday, I'll share what I wish I knew during my Economics PhD - lessons that transformed my journey from academia to tech leadership 🤔 First lesson? The most valuable conversations happen outside your department. I spent years laser-focused on economics, surrounded by fellow econ PhDs. Looking back, I missed countless opportunities to connect with computer science, sociology, and psychology students working on fascinating intersections of our fields ✨ Key insight: No field exists in isolation. The most innovative solutions often come from unexpected connections 💡 Today's tech challenges require understanding both economic incentives AND human behavior AND computational methods. 5 actionable steps I wish I had taken: 🔹 Schedule one coffee chat per week with a PhD from another department 🔹 Join cross-disciplinary reading groups or seminars monthly 🔹 Attend thesis defense presentations from related fields 🔹 Partner with students from other departments for university workshops/events 🔹 Create study groups for shared methodology courses (like advanced statistics) Bonus tip: Most universities have interdisciplinary research initiatives with funding. These are perfect opportunities to collaborate AND get paid for it. More PhD insights coming next Thursday! Hit follow + 🔔 to join the journey ✨ Current PhD students: How are you building relationships across disciplines? And experienced professionals: What interdisciplinary connections have proved most valuable in your career? 👇 More PhD insights coming next Thursday! Hit follow + 🔔 to join the journey ✨ #PhDHindsight