This open access book illustrates how interdisciplinary research develops over the lifetime of a scholar: not in a single project, but as an attitude that trickles down, or spirals up, into research. This book presents how interdisciplinary work has inspired shifts in how the contributors read, value concepts, critically combine methods, cope with knowledge hierarchies, write in style, and collaborate. Drawing on extensive examples from the humanities and social sciences, the editors and chapter authors show how they started, tried to open up, dealt with inconsistencies, had to adapt, and ultimately learned and grew as researchers. The book offers valuable insights into the conditions and complexities present for interdisciplinary research to be successful in an academic setting. This is an open access book.

This Encyclopedia presents a comprehensive overview of the ever-evolving field of Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity across the Sciences. Authored by over 150 experts, it provides a vision of the Sciences in which scholars push boundaries and promote collaboration across diverse disciplines, scientific cultures and practices. This title contains one or more Open Access entries.

This volume showcases interdisciplinary research on young people’s media lifeworlds originating from the research platform #YouthMediaLife at the University of Vienna and its first international conference in 2021. From big questions about our research practices during pandemic times to smaller data sets focusing on specific platforms and historical or geographical particularities, the volume constitutes a diverse collection with a broad thematic heading and, as such, demonstrates the range and scope of this research field. It offers to its readers the opportunity to learn about broader approaches to interdisciplinary research and provides case studies that are very specific in their focus and illustrate irritations and concerns with contemporary media practices.

The rapid change that higher education is undergoing is impacting all of the core mission elements: teaching and learning, research, service, and engagement with the external world (e.g., community engagement and health care delivery). Navigating this environment requires understanding of the underlying dynamics, with particular attention to how the issues are affecting the directions higher education will take. The main focus of the book is on teaching and learning (Section 3), with Sections 1 and 2 providing important context for understanding dynamics affecting how we can achieve our goals in teaching and learning. The section on “Institutional Culture, Structure, and Public Engagement” addresses issues such as promotion and tenure, interdisciplinary collaboration, dissemination and archiving of research outcomes and data, student engagement with community development, and evaluation of research projects. Section 2 on “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” goes far beyond the usual “diversity discussion” to include addressing faculty racial disparities, intersectionality, and “parity in participation.” Then, Section 3, “Teaching and Learning” focuses on out-of-the classroom teaching and on technology enhanced learning, all with many connections to Sections 1 and 2. The intended audience includes both academics and professionals (e.g., faculty and students in departments of higher education, anthropology, and education policy). Higher education leaders, administrators, governing board members, and many others will find the book helpful in providing insight into the future of higher education, especially as it concerns instruction and learning. The book will also be of use to professionals outside higher education who work on policy issues, on meeting the needs of employers, and on preparing students for applying knowledge in their personal lives. Praise for Paths to the Future of Higher Education: "Higher education in the United States is currently undergoing a transformation as a result of unprecedented pressures. Disruptive forces such as rapidly evolving technology, eroding financial support for public universities, proliferation of forprofit entities, changing expectations of students and employers, our country’s reckoning with its history of racism and white supremacy, as well as the politicization of higher education demand changes in systems hundreds of years old. The recent COVID epidemic has forced a radical change in the delivery of higher education – will we ever return to our old ways?" Daniel L. Clay, PhD, MBA Dean and Professor, College of Education, University of Iowa "One of the great challenges facing higher education today involves the changes that are necessary in the fundamental activities of teaching and learning to respond to changing social factors such as diversity, internationalization, the rapid evolution of technology, and unpredictable social needs (e.g., COVID 19). Brian Foster and his colleagues have assembled an important collection of papers on this subject, the future of teaching and learning at the higher education level, in part from an anthropological perspective, but also within the important context of our changing world. As such, the book provides a valuable insight into the perspectives that both faculty and their institutions need to address the changes in their most fundamental roles in providing teaching and learning for future generations." James J. Duderstadt President Emeritus, The University of Michigan

The idea that research should become more interdisciplinary has become commonplace. According to influential commentators, the unprecedented complexity of problems such as climate change or the social implications of biomedicine demand interdisciplinary efforts integrating both the social and natural sciences. In this context, the question of whether a given knowledge practice is too disciplinary, or interdisciplinary, or not disciplinary enough has become an issue for governments, research policy makers and funding agencies. Interdisciplinarity, in short, has emerged as a key political preoccupation; yet the term tends to obscure as much as illuminate the diverse practices gathered under its rubric. This volume offers a new approach to theorising interdisciplinarity, showing how the boundaries between the social and natural sciences are being reconfigured. It examines the current preoccupation with interdisciplinarity, notably the ascendance of a particular discourse in which it is associated with a transformation in the relations between science, technology and society. Contributors address attempts to promote collaboration between, on the one hand, the natural sciences and engineering and, on the other, the social sciences, arts and humanities. From ethnography in the IT industry to science and technology studies, environmental science to medical humanities, cybernetics to art-science, the collection interrogates how interdisciplinarity has come to be seen as a solution not only to enhancing relations between science and society, but the pursuit of accountability and the need to foster innovation. Interdisciplinarity is essential reading for scholars, students and policy makers across the social sciences, arts and humanities, including anthropology, geography, sociology, science and technology studies and cultural studies, as well as all those engaged in interdisciplinary research. It will have particular relevance for those concerned with the knowledge economy, science policy, environmental politics, applied anthropology, ELSI research, medical humanities, and art-science.

This book provides collaborative research teams with a systematic approach for addressing complex real-world problems like widespread poverty, global climate change, organised crime, and escalating health care costs. The three core domains are Synthesising disciplinary and stakeholder knowledge,Understanding and managing diverse unknowns, andProviding integrated research support for policy and practice change. Each of these three domains is organised around five questions For what and for whom?Which knowledge, unknowns and aspects of policy or practice?How?Context?Outcome? This simple framework lays the foundations for developing compilations of concepts, methods and case studies about applying systems thinking, scoping and boundary setting, framing, dealing with values, harnessing and managing differences, undertaking dialogue, building models, applying common metrics, accepting unknowns, advocacy, end-user engagement, understanding authorisation, dealing with organisational facilitators and barriers, and much more. The book makes a case for a new research style—integrative applied research—and a new discipline of Integration and Implementation Sciences or I2S. It advocates for progressing these through an I2S Development Drive. It builds on theory and practice-based research in multi-, inter- and transdisciplinarity, post-normal science, systemic intervention, integrated assessment, sustainability science, team science, mode 2, action research and other approaches. The book concludes with 24 commentaries by Simon Bronitt; L. David Brown; Marcel Bursztyn and Maria Beatriz Maury; Lawrence Cram; Ian Elsum; Holly J. Falk-Krzesinski; Fasihuddin; Howard Gadlin and L. Michelle Bennett; Budi Haryanto; Julie Thompson Klein; Ted Lefroy; Catherine Lyall; M. Duane Nellis; Linda Neuhauser; Deborah O’Connell with Damien Farine, Michael O’Connor and Michael Dunlop; Michael O’Rourke; Christian Pohl; Merritt Polk; Alison Ritter; Alice Roughley; Michael Smithson; Daniel Walker; Michael Wesley; and Glenn Withers. These begin a process of appraisal, discussion and debate across diverse networks.