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Paper short abstract

Can interdisciplinary research transform futures? This presentation argues yes - but not through consensus-building. Drawing on cybersecurity research, it shows how epistemic contradictions between disciplines generate new research sites and possibilities for action unavailable through translation.

Paper long abstract

Interdisciplinary research is widely recognized as essential: problems are too complex for single disciplines, and collaboration is needed to address challenges and imagine better futures. Yet the mechanisms through which interdisciplinary work actually produces knowledge deserve closer examination.

When collaboration encounters difficulties, participants often focus on communication: developing glossaries, bridging "different disciplinary cultures," or improving translation. While well-intentioned, this approach can overlook deeper epistemic, methodological, and ontological contradictions. This presentation suggests an alternative: if interdisciplinarity is to contribute meaningfully to future-making, contradictions themselves might serve as epistemological engines rather than problems to resolve. Scientific knowledge often advances not despite disagreements between disciplines, but through sustained engagement with them.

Following multi-sited ethnography's insight that research sites emerge from disagreements between subjects about "the putatively same world" (Marcus 2009), this presentation explores contradiction-based interdisciplinary work. An example from cybersecurity research in the ForDaySec consortium illustrates this: ethnographic observation revealed that households gift technology and delegate IT security practices, while computer science's 'user' model assumes individuals who purchase, operate, and secure their own devices. Rather than treating this as miscommunication requiring translation, engaging the contradiction directly generated a new collaborative research field: "Security in Everyday Digitalization." What possibilities for knowledge and action emerge when disciplinary contradictions become generative sites rather than obstacles to overcome? This approach positions contradictions as methodological resources that can produce insights unavailable through consensus-oriented frameworks.