Summer School “Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity in Science and Technology”

During the last week of September I participated in a Summer School (the temperatures warranted the term) in Wuppertal, organised by the IZWT (Interdisciplinary Centre of Science and Technology Studies) of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal.

Wuppertal is a small-ish town in Western Germany, in the region Bergisches Land. It is nestled in a beautiful landscape of valleys and mountains, as the name of the region implies – although I am inclined to call them hills, rather. Surrounded by several German cities of which I had heard many times, but never had a concept of where they are geographically located, Wuppertal is only a short train ride away from Köln, Dortmund, Essen, Bochum, Duisburg and Düsseldorf. One thing I love about Summer Schools is that they give you the chance to explore a new part of the world, or discover a known part of the world from an unexpected perspective and guided by locals. The organisers of this Summer School made sure for this to happen! One thing you cannot miss in Wuppertal is the famous suspension railway (Schwebebahn), meandering through the city above the river Wupper. This historical means of transport makes for an impressive first sight when exiting from the train station. Throughout the week we were treated to Wuppertal’s best secret spot for dinner, explored the local pubs and learnt some interesting historical facts about the neighbouring city Köln (Colone) in a guided tour.
But of course, my purpose in Wuppertal was not of a tourist nature. Boarding my train on Sunday morning, I was looking forward to a week full of captivating talks by scientists in the fields of interdisciplinary research and diversity in science, of enlightening workshops around core concepts and questions in the field, and of inspiring presentations by peers that would reveal potential futures for interdisciplinary research.

The week was kicked off with a keynote by Prof Hanne Andersen. Through the different definitions of interdisciplinarity that exist in the world (and especially in the literature), we started exploring the question of what it means to do interdisciplinary research. Can we assume a mutual understanding of that concept? And: is it as important as some accounts make us believe? Hanne offered an alternative narrative: she suggests putting the idea of crossing boundaries, rather than crossing disciplines, at the centre of this discussion. Disciplines get increasingly diverse, with the number of specialisations growing, and thus, such boundaries have to be crossed in “monodisciplinary work”, too. In the work she presents, she therefore highlights two important factors to characterise collaborative research that crosses boundaries: the ‘cognitive distance’ between the units that are being integrated (may that be disciplines or other types of differing worldviews), and the dependency between collaborators.

After this opener that acknowledged the importance interdisciplinarity but called into question the dominance of certain aspects of the concept, we continued with discussions around technoscientific bubbles with Prof Cyrus Mody. He describes them as field of inflated interest that burst, at some point. With this burst, also the value of the related knowledge decreases. For a long time, nobody explicitly asked, but we all wondered: is interdisciplinarity a scientific bubble? Will it burst one day, leaving scholars in this field out of research topics? We hope not!

With Prof Erin Leahy we then dove into the intricacies of interdisciplinary research. What does it mean for the collaboration if the variety of disciplines involves increases? How can we understand the distinctness of different disciplines? Erin offered a rich picture of the work she has been doing with a number of indicators she worked on over the years, like the measuring of cognitive distinctness of two fields by analysing how often they co-occur among co-authors. She leaves us with an important question: what costs do we pay when we do research interdisciplinarily? Costs, that to me, mostly seem of institutional-structural nature, which makes me hopeful that my own project will have a positive impact onto the research landscape.

Prof Hanna Rubin’s talk, though, almost made me want to switch fields. Hanna’s research focuses on diversity in science, rather than interdisciplinarity per se, which cannot be disregarded from any discussion around structures in academia. Her concise and easily understandable introduction into agent-based modelling, where she explained to us different types of models and patiently countered all the critical questions, really drew me in. While in the long run, modelling would probably not satisfy my interest in the quirkiness of human beings, I had so much fun trying to set up a hypothetical model and think through the necessary properties and parameters that would adequately represent the chosen question.

Diving an even more quantitative world with Prof Daniel Acuña, he introduced us to another perspective onto diversity and representation in academia. Among other things, we discussed the use of recommendation systems in academia: algorithms, which analyse someone’s reading behaviour and recommend fitting articles. My first reaction was concern about some of the obvious biases this might introduce, but there might be ways to use such systems to actually increase chances for authors from marginalised regions or less privileged university to have their publications reach the people that would be interested in them.

We finished off the week with discussions on space. Prof Hunter Heyck sparked reflections on the buildings that surround us every day, which host interdisciplinary research and, in the course, enable or hinder it. He made us think about questions like: where would be the best place, geographically, to put an interdisciplinary centre? Why are buildings where they are? Where do the resources come from that go into the maintenance of such buildings? How do they connect to the institutions, technologies, and research they host? And with that, and a good pint of German beer, we said goodbye to all the new acquaintances and maybe future (interdisciplinary) collaborators.
This summer school was part of the yearly series “Interdisciplinary Summer School in Higher Education Research and Science Studies” (HERSS).

Author: Anne-Sophie Schaltegger

If any of the topics above sparked your interest, check out the following publications:

Andersen, H. (2016). Collaboration, Interdisciplinarity, and the Epistemology of Contemporary Science Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 56: 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.10.006
Alvial-Palavicino, C., and Konrad, K. (2019). The rise of graphene expectations: Anticipatory practices in emergent nanotechnologies. Futures, 109: 192-202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2018.10.008
Leahey, E. (2018). The Perks and Perils of Interdisciplinary Research. European Review, 26(S2): S55-S67. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798718000261
Fazelpour, S., and Rubin, H. (forthcoming). Diversity and homophily in social networks. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Achakulvisut, T., Acuna, D. E., Ruangrong, T., and Kording, K. (2016). Science Concierge: A Fast Content-Based Recommendation System for Scientific Publications. PLoS ONE, 11(7): e 0158423. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158423
Ranking, W. J. (2010). The Epistemology of the Suburbs: Knowledge, Production, and Corporate Laboratory Design. Critical Inquiry, 36(4): 771-806. https://doi.org/10.1086/655212