Interdisciplinarity lacks clout to keep its cash

Interdisciplinary scholars often lack sufficient standing in the university hierarchy to hold on to their funding, with resources, incentives and structures to support such work suffering as a result, according to a survey of leading research universities.

The 23-member League of European Research Universities (LERU) agreed in 2016 on an ideal of interdisciplinarity in universities. Two researchers have looked back at their progress since then, finding plenty of room for improvement in efforts needed to facilitate such work.

Jane Ohlmeyer, a professor of modern history at Trinity College Dublin, said universities were not yet matching their stated intentions with resources, although they were “beginning” to do so. A common issue is that grant funding won by interdisciplinary academics and centres is lost to other parts of the university, she said.

“Not enough goes down on the ground to incentivise behaviours, whether it’s the faculty siphoning it off or the institution itself siphoning it off. That proportion needs to go to support early careers,” she explained, because postdocs in multidisciplinary research centres were doing “the most meaningful” interdisciplinary work.

In their paper, Professor Ohlmeyer and her co-author, Didier Wernli, the deputy director for research at the University of Geneva’s Global Studies Institute, write that “resources need to be distributed fairly”.

“When the interdisciplinary research centres are able to collect the overheads, this means also that they can define their own research policy and how to support young researchers. That’s exactly what we did here,” said Professor Wernli, referring to his institute. He said Geneva’s creation of a director of interdisciplinarity within the rector’s office had helped to get his centre on the overall institutional agenda.

But Professor Ohlmeyer said it was “very unusual” for interdisciplinary centre directors to have parity with faculty deans, a position that would allow them to join the time-honoured “scraping for resources”.

Professor Ohlmeyer, who is an international adviser reviewing the UK’s Research Excellence Framework, said the design of the UK’s overarching incentive structure was “typical” in that it “actively mitigates against” interdisciplinarity. Under current frameworks, those embarking on interdisciplinary careers must often publish in disciplinary journals to get recognition for their work, she said.

Heavy workloads are another interdisciplinary problem. The authors say universities need clearer mechanisms and expectations to ensure that new appointees do not end up with more work than their single-disciplinary counterparts. Tensions between single and interdisciplinary colleagues can also be exacerbated by scarce funding, particularly for the latter. Professor Ohlmeyer said there was still a lot of “tokenism” among funders, with mixed collaborations often driven by STEM disciplines.

She said the European Commission’s approach of flagging some grant calls as having interdisciplinary potential was not enough. “Just because they’re flagged doesn’t mean that they’ve put their money where their mouth is,” she said.

In general, she said, interdisciplinarity was becoming “increasingly mainstream” and enjoyed some awareness at most universities, with Professor Wernli noting that bedding-in “creates some tensions”. In their paper, they suggest that universities turn to a growing body of academic literature to fine-tune their approaches.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com