Interdisciplinary learning and research

Find out how to work across multiple academic disciplines in higher education, in order to pool expertise and develop novel skillsets and solutions to complex problems. These guides offer insight on how to break down disciplinary boundaries in university teaching and research to seek greater understanding.

An explorer observes a flag flying atop a mountain made of books

Lessons from evolutionary biology to prepare students in an uncertain world

Universities are charged with developing the next generation for a future we can’t predict. Here are three lessons from evolutionary biology to make sense of a changing world – and three skills the workforce of tomorrow will need

Lakshmi Goel

Al Akhawayn University

‘If you can empower others to build connections, you can help build a thriving collaborative ecosystem’

For university administrators, part of the job is to help researchers do the cool stuff, without getting bogged down or intimidated by the forms, calendars and other paperwork, writes Marvin Washington. Here, he offers tips on how to foster interdisciplinary collaboration

Marvin Washington

University of Alberta

A group of people sit around in discussion

Supporting education-focused academics on the road less travelled

Education-focused academics must often navigate an unclear career path with limited opportunities. Danijela Serbic offers advice on how to set up an educational group to support their career development

Danijela Serbic

Royal Holloway, University of London

How can we give students the agency to deal with the climate crisis?

Climate impact needs to be the lens through which students view their studies, if we’re going to equip future generations to deal with the coming emergency. Here are the best teaching strategies to do so

Alex MacLaren

Heriot-Watt University

Campus Talks: Educating our way out of the climate crisis

Two academics share strategies for advancing climate action and boosting sustainability at an institutional and individual level

Liz Price , Tripp Shealy

Manchester Metropolitan University, Virginia Tech

The art of change: using creative research methods to solve the plastics crisis

Incorporating theatre, music and the visual arts as research tools complements analytical and qualitative approaches to environmental challenges – and goes beyond public engagement into local and global policymaking

Cressida Bowyer

The University of Portsmouth

Embedding the SDGs into curricula via an interdisciplinary approach

Incorporating the SDGs into teaching involves facilitating project collaboration among students from different disciplines. Here are examples of how this can work in practice

Sambit Dash, Guruprasad Rao, Preetham Kumar

Manipal Academy of Higher Education

Hands high-five in front of a leafy tree

Bridging the SDG awareness gap

Universities have a critical role to play in increasing awareness of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Here’s how to do it

James Miller, Andrew Hursthouse

University of the West of Scotland

Two hands fit jigsaw puzzle pieces together

How to achieve interdisciplinary research? Focus on the people

Restructuring research domains around four communities allowed academics to find their natural home, writes Andrew Linn. Here’s how to do it

Andrew Linn

University of Westminster

A five-step framework to integrate sustainability into higher education

To integrate the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals into curricula, students need to be truly engaged. The five-step SCORE framework could be the answer

Mariam Shadan, Yusra Idrees

Dubai Medical University

Beyond borders: how to make online global collaborative learning work

As higher education strives to ‘reset’ in the age of AI to become more flexible, interdisciplinary, open, focused on real-world learning and with authentic assessment, curriculum-embedded OGCL is a key path to future-ready graduates

Julie Lindsay

The University of Southern Queensland

Leveraging international collaborations to tackle global health challenges

Global health challenges such as cancer demand collective efforts that transcend national boundaries. Eli Vlaisavljevich shares how he leverages international collaborations to produce groundbreaking biomedical work

Eli Vlaisavljevich

Virginia Tech

Teaming up with students to design sustainability education

Involving students as co-creators and mentors in sustainability courses can help address differences in their understanding as well as issues such as eco-anxiety

Anne Le Goff , Yacine Baouch , Frédéric Huet , Pierre Feissel

Université de Technologie de Compiègne

Using Sustainable Development Goals to foster innovation

The SDGs offer both a universal framework and a way to incorporate global perspectives into curricula. Here are strategies for integrating their outward-focused, innovative mindset into everyday learning

Tripp Shealy

Virginia Tech

An illustration of business people sat on a growing plant

Three ways to embed career development learning more deeply in your curriculum

Embedding career development learning into curricular learning can be invaluable for students. Here’s how to integrate it more meaningfully

Anna Branford , Julian Lee

RMIT University

A group of students converse over a table

Interdisciplinarity makes us greater than the sum of our parts

The real world is complicated. Let’s give our students the tools to take it on with interdisciplinary education

Jillian Terry

The London School of Economics and Political Science

Female lab technicians carrying out experiments

Developing interdisciplinary courses for tomorrow’s scholars

Many universities are developing new interdisciplinary degree programmes to prepare students for working across sectors on complex issues. But how can we engage faculty in this whole-institution approach?

Anne Preston, Katherine Fletcher

UCL

Why peer-to-peer conferences benefit doctoral students and their institutions

Solid research skills aside, PhD students need to master the art of collaboration and communicating their ideas. A student-led conference can offer that support

Heli Wang

Singapore Management University

illustration of hand and five stars, reputation concept

Five strategies to cultivate university reputation

The reputational crisis of many universities is a crisis of identity, writes Santiago Fernández-Gubieda. Here, he explains that reputation starts within the organisation, and offers five actions to foster public trust in universities

Santiago Fernández-Gubieda

University of Navarra

Centralise laboratory management for better teaching and research

Creating a single department to oversee laboratory operations can streamline your processes and cut costs. Here’s how to do it

Mohd Fatimie Irzaq Khamis

Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP)

A group of people working round an office table

How to create a start-up dynamic in academia

Innovation hubs have sparked ideas, fostered partnerships and raised funding for the software industry. Let’s use the same model to create groundbreaking educational programmes

Deborah Sepich

Colorado State University Global

Woman inteviewing man, looking thoughtful

Oral history for all: a research method that crosses disciplinary boundaries

Oral history’s potential to capture lesser-known perspectives and fill knowledge gaps deserves appreciation beyond the humanities

Sien van der Plank, Lareb Dean , Padmini Broomfield

University of Southampton

How Mozart and the arts can help students feel less awkward

Music and dance give the post-Covid cohort low-stress opportunities to face each other in potentially antagonising – even agonising – set-ups. Here’s how a multisensory curriculum helps students combat feelings of isolation and impostor syndrome

Brigid Cohen , Wendy Anne Lee, Rosemary Quinn, Mimi Yin

New York University

Campus webinar: The evolution and innovation of interdisciplinarity

Join three experts from Campus+ partner institutions in Australia as they discuss interdisciplinarity, how to implement it in teaching and research and why it’s important for the future

Kyle Jenkins, Louise Kuchel, Rohan Walker

The University of Queensland , The University of Southern Queensland , The University of Newcastle, Australia

Seven structural changes to help bring Indigenous perspectives into curricula

Impermanence of resources, priorities and personnel makes curriculum reform a challenge. Here, Kirstie Smith and Simon Young offer strategies based on their experience in a regional law school

Kirstie Smith , Simon Young

The University of Southern Queensland

Practical strategies for overcoming challenges in interdisciplinary project-based learning

Overcome project-based learning challenges with strategies aimed at empowering students to develop interdisciplinary skill sets

Na Li, Eng Gee Lim, Mark Leach

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University

Advice on developing and managing successful interdisciplinary research teams

How to successfully develop and run interdisciplinary research teams

John Domingue explains how to foster a culture of openness and support that encourages and helps staff teams to pursue interdisciplinary research projects

John Domingue

The Open University

Adapt, evolve, elevate: ChatGPT is calling for interdisciplinary action

Our response to ChatGPT and its successors should be one that encourages open, interdisciplinary discourse and supports research investigating AI from every angle

Leanne Ramer

Simon Fraser University

Interdisciplinary vs multidisciplinary and convergence research

Global challenges demand collaboration across disciplines. This resource explores the associated advantages and challenges

Sajan Daniel George

Manipal Academy of Higher Education

Illustration of people in silhouette with cityscape

Harnessing the humanities for transformative tech leadership

Amid a growing awareness that humanities students and faculty need data literacy, Rishi Jaitly, a longstanding champion of the humanities in technology, explains why data and technology leaders also need an education in the liberal arts

Rishi Jaitly

Virginia Tech

Interdisciplinarity is a core part of AI’s heritage and its future

To train students to engage responsibly with artificial intelligence, a genuinely interdisciplinary perspective – from the language used to recognising that human and machine work in concert – is essential, write Elvin Lim and Jonathan Chase

Elvin Lim , Jonathan Chase

Singapore Management University

Advice on fostering interdisciplinary learning in large scale doctoral programmes

Fostering interdisciplinary learning in large-scale doctoral programmes

Corina Sas highlights key insights for design and delivery of large-scale doctoral training programmes that foster supportive and cooperative interdisciplinary learning environments

Corina Sas

Lancaster University

How business schools could lead the charge to revive faith in higher education

As US higher education faces a drop in student numbers, business schools could help transform universities into the cross-disciplinary experiential learning hubs needed today, write Ahmad Al Asady and Siri Terjesen

Ahmad Al Asady, Siri Terjesen

North Dakota State University, Florida Atlantic University

Illustration of two men in shirt and ties shaking hands over jigsaw speech bubble

How can we measure interdisciplinary learning?

A benchmark of success for interdisciplinary learning is graduates who have the flexibility to examine their areas of interest and develop attributes that deliver practical value to future employers

Elvin Lim , Daniel Seah

Singapore Management University

Poetry can be used in many classes at university

Poetry is a door into many disciplines, not just a literary one

A poem can act as a memory aid, ground facts in individual experience and prompt questions about policy, power and generational impact, says Pádraig Ó Tuama

Pádraig Ó Tuama

Poetry Unbound

Young researchers work together on a green city project

Building blocks of university-industry partnerships for positive change

How universities can develop strategic cross-sector partnerships and trans-disciplinary research in order to boost progress towards the SDGs

Tim Bodley-Scott, Ersel Oymak

UCL

A female and male researcher conducting interdisciplinary research

How to encourage gender equity in interdisciplinary research

A study into gender balances of interdisciplinary research teams shows that the presence of women is beneficial up to a point. Elisabeth Browning suggests ways funders and institutions can encourage their participation

Elisabeth Browning

Elsevier

Inter-faculty working brings students together

Building the future: the case for inter-faculty learning

Launching an innovative inter-faculty way of working has brought great benefit to students, especially in the post-Covid period, say Gemma Ahearne and Matt Murphy

Gemma Ahearne, Matt Murphy

University of Liverpool

Advice on effective communication for international collaborations

Clear communication as the key to international collaboration

The success of international research collaborations rests upon clear communication, writes Marian Brady as she offers advice on what this involves in practice

Marian Brady

Glasgow Caledonian University

Augmented reality in teaching: key challenges and how to overcome them

Will Shüler identifies three challenges of integrating augmented reality into the classroom and shares advice on how university tutors might navigate them

Will Shüler

Royal Holloway, University of London

Hands linked to show networks and collaboration

Doctoral training programmes: worthwhile or not?

If the chance to work with gifted people and across unfamiliar disciplines appeals, a doctoral training programme could be for you, whether you’re a student or an academic

Graham Huggan

University of Leeds

Advice on overseeing new curriculum development based on the general education reforms in Hong Kong

Seven lessons from interdisciplinary general education curriculum reform

Adrian Lam highlights lessons drawn from the implementation of interdisciplinary general education curriculum reform in Hong Kong universities

Adrian Man-Ho Lam

The University of Hong Kong

An online meeting. University professors and lecturers need to learn to work together online in the new normal

Eight essential tips for remote interdisciplinary teamwork

Rocío Elizabeth Cortez Márquez and Elia Esther Mendoza Carabeo give advice on making interdisciplinary teams work online

Rocío Elizabeth Cortez Márquez , Elia Esther Mendoza Carabeo

Tecnológico de Monterrey

Fostering interdisciplinary thinking in students is a great idea for universities

How to lay the groundwork for interdisciplinarity in students

Recent events have shown the necessity of working together, and it’s never too early for universities, faculty and students to begin thinking about this, says Georgina Harris

Georgina Harris

Arden University

Advice on applying action learning to student surveys to improve teaching practices

Using action learning to improve interdisciplinary online teaching

A guide to using action learning – questioning knowledge to find solutions – to evaluate and improve teaching practices, based on research by Na Li, Qian Wang, Jiajun Liu and Victoria Marsick

Na Li, Qian Wang , Jiajun Liu, Victoria Marsick

Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University , Columbia University

Creating an interdisciplinary team at research universities is just like playing a fantasy role-playing game

Why interdisciplinarity is just like a fantasy role-playing game

Who’s the barbarian? Which one’s the wizard? Lorena Quilantán García offers practical advice on embarking upon your very own interdisciplinary hero quest

Lorena Quilantán García

Tecnológico de Monterrey

Advice on working with students to develop a well-being module that educates them in mental health and self-care

Co-creating an interdisciplinary well-being module for all students

Elena Riva and Wiki Jeglinska explain how academics can work with students to co-create well-being modules that span multiple disciplines and support students’ self-care, drawing on their own experience of collaborating on such a scheme

Elena Riva, Wiki Jeglinska

The University of Warwick

Advice on designing university curricula that nurture creativity

How to embed creativity more fully into university curricula

Five key strategies to enhance student creativity through university curricula that encourage exploration and enquiry

Gareth Loudon

Royal College of Art

Advice on establishing creative collaborations between students in different disciplines to further their learning

Connecting research and humanities through creative collaborations

Creative collaborations between students in different disciplines can offer opportunities to gain “real world” experience and apply their knowledge in new contexts. Allison Schwartz explains how

Allison Schwartz

University of West Florida

Advice on supporting the well-being of overworked academics

Supporting academia’s well-being during Covid-19 and beyond

With an unprecedented global mental health crisis and rising stress among university staff, six academics come together to propose how best to support faculty and new ways of working now and well beyond the pandemic

June Gruber, Lisa Miracchi, Sabrina Marques, Kirk Ambrose, Becca Ciancanelli, Paulo Boggio

The University of Colorado Boulder, University of Pennsylvania, Western Connecticut State University, Mackenzie Presbyterian University

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