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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how interdisciplinary work is facilitated, explores current and proposed practices that enable interdisciplinary work and analysis what kind of futures are envisioned.

Paper long abstract

Much has been written about interdisciplinarity (ID), about its logics, its translation problems, its (epistemological) frictions. Anyone who has worked or tried to work interdisciplinarily knows about the many challenges involved. Nevertheless, one of today’s commonplaces is that existing problems and crises do not care about disciplinary boundaries; inter- and even transdisciplinarity is called for. Research and research institutions are often valued, justified and funded (or not) according to how publics and policy perceives their “impact”. Therefore, it is not surprising that the number of formats aimed at facilitating interdisciplinary work is growing.

What experiences are shared (as good or bad practice) to enable ID? What kind of scenarios, promises and imaginaries are embedded in facilitation formats? How is ID imagined to contribute to just and equitable futures? How are frictions and limitations of ID addressed or not? And what epistemic and ontological assumptions are woven into the advice given or called for?

These questions are addressed by interlacing two strands of data. Strand 1 is an analysis of international facilitation formats including tool boxes, peer-reviewed articles, blog posts, guidance documents and card sets. The second strand are data from a survey addressed to members of Young Academies in Germany investigating their ID work and experiences in general, and frictions including ways of dealing with them in particular.