Interdisciplinarity in Research at The University of Melbourne

Interdisciplinarity in Research at The University of Melbourne Annie Bolitho Mark McDonnell 14 July 2010 ABSTRACT: Interdisciplinary research is a longstanding approach to problems which require broad and integrative conceptualization and outcomes, as is the case with many contemporary issues of public concern. The growing relevance and interest of this type of research has led to new initiatives at The University of Melbourne – a suite of Interdisciplinary Research Institutes and a Seed Fund Granting Scheme – and increasing engagement by the broad academic community. This report presents the findings of preliminary research at the University to explore the attitudes and practices of University researchers working on interdisciplinary projects. The report highlights the pressing importance of interdisciplinarity, the institutional challenges of changing the culture of research to support this approach and the issue of research quality, all of which are of importance to the present and future development of individual researchers and of the overall interdisciplinary strategy.

Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute 221 Bouverie Street, The University of Melbourne Victoria 3010 Australia email: [email protected] • phone: +61 3 8344 3099 • fax: +61 3 9349 4218

www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au

Interdisciplinarity in Research

BACKGROUND Interdisciplinarity in education and research is a key component of The University of Melbourne’s strategy as it moves into the second decade of the new millennium (University of Melbourne: 2007). The Melbourne Model provides a strong context for practices of interdisciplinarity in undergraduate education. The University Council has also set up a $30 million Major Research Projects Fund to make the progression towards interdisciplinary capability and cross faculty collaboration on large public questions (OVC: 2009). This has enabled the development of ‘virtual’ Melbourne Research Institutes in specific areas – the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, the Melbourne Materials Institute, the Melbourne Energy Institute, the Melbourne Neuroscience Institute and the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society, with others to follow. These Institutes are intended to create a stronger base for connectivity between researchers in different faculties and between the University and its intended partners, and to nurture research aligned with interdisciplinary objectives, while ensuring that Institutional Grants Scheme (IGS) research quantum remains with the Faculties. Senior academics across all Faculties have participated in the development of the Institutes, through committees, ‘theme groups’, and funding proposal reviews. Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) was the first Institute to open its doors in 2008. The sustainability field is one of crossings between many disciplines. If one takes the challenge of changing the car culture in response to climate change as one of many facing society, the steps to be taken must be underpinned by research that integrates land use planning frameworks, public transport design, fuel alternatives, behavioural change and accounting and information systems. Prof Ruth Fincher, MSSI’s Interim Director, undertook to engage the support of individuals, departments, faculties and centres over interdisciplinary activities and projects, particularly with a view to integrating social and technical-scientific research. As the new Institutes progressed, it became apparent that they would be testing grounds for interdisciplinary research. Thus it seemed of value to produce a position paper exploring interdisciplinarity in various university research contexts, to provide evidence of the experience of researchers, supervisors and Research Higher Degree students. The research methodology entailed an Interdisciplinary Research Focus Group with experienced University of Melbourne researchers, a workshop for supervisors on Quality in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Graduate Research, and follow up interviews with academics with different research orientations, working in different discipline combinations. This discussion paper draws on these findings and reflects University of Melbourne researchers’ experience and expertise in the context of the wider literature on interdisciplinarity. Our investigation revealed that interdisciplinary research is valuable in and of itself in different circumstances, especially when broader theoretical perspectives and broader arguments are required than those available in a single discipline. While researchers spoke of the importance of their own founding disciplines, they chose to include interdisciplinarity in their research repertoire when this would get the best results. Remote sensing researcher Andrew Western highlighted that his best papers are all within his discipline, but that there was important work he and his collaborators would not have fulfilled unless they had taken an interdisciplinary approach. Health researcher Tony Lamontagne identified himself as an Epidemiologist, and said that he would not present at a History or qualitative Sociology conference. Nevertheless, in the field of workplace health, all three disciplinary perspectives are crucial to influencing policy. Urban water researcher Chris Walsh spoke of the pervasively interdisciplinary nature of water studies, in which to study rainfall requires meteorologists; to study catchments involves hydrologists; to study waterway health requires ecologists; to study water delivery and use in population centres involves social scientists; and to study changes in delivery and use involves experts in law, policy, and public education. Education researcher Kylie Smith highlighted that the area of child protection raises questions for social workers, lawyers, and educators all of whom are trying to achieve outcomes from different perspectives, and that by bringing together different theoretical approaches they were able to build a richer case that would be more difficult to counter.

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Interdisciplinarity in Research Complex problems inspired many people’s work and a number of researchers believed they were a necessary reason for it. They said that interdisciplinary research exists for a purpose. There are issues with building codes in fire-prone areas, urban rivers, Indigenous rights, the Great Barrier Reef, public infrastructure, violence and health which cannot be solved by researchers from single disciplines. There are also research domains that require the expertise of those from other disciplines to fulfil their research agenda such as computation in health sciences and social sciences in resource management. Interdisciplinary work, they suggested, also challenge the deeper assumptions of disciplines and facilitate changes in their perceptions and practices. Some problems do not need new knowledge or more data. They simply need the added element of public education, for example, encouraging people to grow more native species in their gardens, and here an interdisciplinary approach offers outcomes over and above the accrual of data. Late in 2009 researchers welcomed the introduction of the University’s Interdisciplinary Seed Funding Grant Scheme, which aims to increase research activity to address complex societal challenges. It is delivered through the Melbourne Research Institutes and will run for three years, with $1million funding available in the first year. The schemes objectives are to: Fund highly innovative small- to medium-scale interdisciplinary research projects that show significant potential for future funding by granting bodies; and to catalyse the drawing together of academic staff from across disciplines to work on interdisciplinary problems consistent with the broad research objectives of one or more of the Melbourne Research Institutes and their areas of focus. The scheme will produce new and exciting research activity and provide additional and special experience in developing and assessing interdisciplinary research. Our research presents a preliminary overview of interdisciplinarity in various University research settings. It revealed distinctive as well as common interests in and issues with undertaking interdisciplinary work. The findings are grouped under the following sections: Challenges and Opportunities, which orients the reader to the field, and includes definitions and terms and the range of different interdisciplinary positions available; The Interdisciplinary Research Undertaking, detailing pros and cons of venturing into interdisciplinary research; Keys to Successful Collaborations; Pitfalls and Roadblocks; Institutional Arrangements, which outlines their influence on sustained interdisciplinary work; Ways Forward, a number of recommendations made by researchers at a focus group held in June 2009; and a concluding summary of issues.

Acknowledgements We wish to thank all those who took part in our focus group, workshop, subsequent interviews and discussions: Lu Aye, Berin Boughton, Margaret Coady, Marion Frere, Lee Godden, Kerry Hinton, Tony la Montagne, Hector Malano, Jonathan Manton, Dianne Mulcahy, Palani (Marimuthu) Palaniswami, Kylie Smith, John Tobin, Virginie Tassin, Paolo Tombesi, Frank Vetere, Chris Walsh, Andrew Western, Carolyn Whitzman, Justin Zobel. Gemma Aldred and Craig Prebble both played important roles in the research. Meryl Fullerton, Jeanette Fyffe, Shane Huntington, Jacqui Randall and Julie Willis gave valuable advice early in the project. The report has also been greatly enriched by comments from Ruth Fincher, Clinton Golding and Justin Zobel.

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Interdisciplinarity in Research

INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES Introduction Interdisciplinarity is a longstanding mode of research and has led to many successful innovations in knowledge and in the tools which now underpin contemporary society and its economic, social and industrial infrastructure (Klein: 1990). Disciplinary faculties remain an enduring and pragmatic arrangement for structuring universities. However shifting trends have altered expectations of disciplinary problem solving and knowledge practices over the years. In Australia these changes include the establishment of new universities with new academic programs from the late 1950s to the late 1970s, the accreditation of Colleges of Advanced Education and the continual restructuring of universities in response to changing demands. The intellectual roots of any discipline is rich and complicated and various current disciplines can be seen as having grown out of others, such as Cultural Studies from Literature, while a few are the product of disciplines joining forces, as in the case of Biomedical Engineering. Human computer interaction calls for a kind of ‘multidisciplinary discipline,’ involving ergonomics, anthropology, psychology, computer science, and engineering. Many universities now integrate aspects of interdisciplinarity into their existing research and education programs (Sá: 2008). At the University of Melbourne this is exemplified by the Melbourne Model and Breadth Subjects, a key aspect of the University’s New Generation degrees, which allow the undergraduate to choose 25 per cent of subjects from other areas than the ones that make up the core disciplines of the degree. This approach has produced coordinated efforts to integrate disciplines (Golding: 2009). This direction is also reflected in novel national education initiatives such as the US National Institute of Health Interdisciplinary Research Training Programs, the US National Science Foundation funded Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program (IGERT: 2010), and the creation of new institutions such as the US-based Global Institute for Sustainability at Arizona State University, and the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity at the University of North-Texas (USA) (CSID: 2010). The growing importance of interdisciplinarity is in part driven by the need to find solutions to challenges such as globalisation, feeding the world’s growing population, instability in financial markets, the growing need for health care, increasing energy consumption and the loss of ecosystem services and biodiversity (National Academy of Sciences: 2004; Morgan: 2002; Lynch: 2006; Smith & Carey: 2007; Jacobs & Frickel: 2009: Porter & Rafols: 2009). At the same time it is well known that novel research occurs at the boundaries between disciplines, for example in contemporary developments in psychophysiology and cognitive neuroscience. A search of all ISI Web of Science databases from 1944 to December 2009 revealed nearly 50,000 citations that included the terms ‘multidisciplinary’, ‘cross-disciplinary’, and ‘transdisciplinary’, confirming that research involving more than one discipline is extensive. Jacobs and Frickel (2009) report similar findings regarding the increase in interdisciplinary studies between 1990 and 2007, and further break down the information to illustrate the extent of interdisciplinary studies in the top 25 journal subject categories which include Education, Medicine, Public Health, History, Chemistry, Literature, Religion and Philosophy, to name a few. Commenting on the level of activity in the interdisciplinary area today, Slatin et al (2004) sound a cautionary note: ‘what remains uncertain … is the degree to which academic and research organizations and the associations and journals of the disciplines themselves, are prepared to change in order to support interdisciplinary work (p. 61). Universities may speak of interdisciplinarity as key to progress but most take a simplistic view and do not have workable models to facilitate it according to Kezar (2005). These reservations were evident in the responses of researchers we spoke to in the course of our research. They drew attention to the Australia-wide context and the Bradley Committee’s signal of a greater commitment to

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Interdisciplinarity in Research specialisation, potentially to the detriment of interdisciplinarity. For health researchers the unclear spheres of responsibility of the NHMRC and ARC were seen to contribute to the difficulty of interdisciplinary work. All researchers referred repeatedly to issues with the University’s faculty structure and excellence-based rationale, and all highlighted that the problem of publishing is acute. The pressure of the ERA is unremitting and interdisciplinary work tends not to be associated with the highest impact journals.

Interdisciplinary Positions Disciplines signify academic communities and their intellectual foundations and tools, as well as their histories and traditions. Yet disciplines are rarely completely understood and unproblematic entities. To take as an example, when statistical methods are used in social sciences – is the investigation maths or social science? Geographers do not subscribe to a common method – does this mean it is not a proper discipline? The position of disciplines is always somewhat fluid: there are overlaps between them, and the status of some disciplines has undergone considerable change over the past ten years. Furthermore, interdisciplinary activity may flourish behind the exterior front of supposedly single discipline departments and faculties. Institutional connotations of disciplines can be found alongside institutional ones, since disciplines provide structural foundations for the majority of universities, and these may be problematic and limiting, and rouse new initiatives in interdisciplinarity. The term interdisciplinary, along with ‘multidisciplinary’, ‘cross disciplinary’, and ‘transdisciplinary’ is often used imprecisely (Davies and Devlin, 2007). Interest in interdisciplinary research in diverse academic fields has resulted in a plethora of definitions and explanations (Klein: 1990; Weingart & Stehr: 2000; Lattuca: 2001; Morgan: 2002; National Academy of Sciences: 2004; Aboelela et al: 2007; Repko: 2008; CSID: 2010). Terminology is frequently used without explicit reference to the mode of research in question. In this study ‘interdisciplinary’ is used as an overarching reference to research across disciplines. However interdisciplinary may also refer to research within what might appear to outsiders to be a single discipline. In Melbourne’s Engineering faculty for example, Professor Iven Mareels draws on electrical engineering and mathematical theory as well as concepts in natural systems in his interdisciplinary work. To indicate some relevant differences between modes of interdisciplinary research activity we include a diagram developed by Lyall (2009). The first position, multidisciplinarity, shows three discipline teams working concurrently or in sequence, without the respective disciplines seeking to integrate or blend. The second position, interdisciplinarity shows a greater interaction and potential integration. The disciplines are working together and creating a shared discourse about the research problem. Finally the representation of transdisciplinary research highlights an external issues focus, which is likely to reflect a mix of disciplines associated with each issue:

Innogen – Still ID rather than TD

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Interdisciplinarity in Research University of Melbourne researchers, Davies and Devlin (2007) produced their paper on interdisciplinary higher education to assist Melbourne University staff at the time of the introduction of the Melbourne Model, focused on student learning under a variety of types of disciplinarity and they provide basic definitions. Multidisciplinarity is the recognition that there are many ‘discrete and autonomous disciplines’. Davies and Devlin (2007) provide the example that an accounting student can take subjects in accounting as well as subjects in other disciplines such as history. Similarly, a single researcher may have expertise and degrees in more than one discipline, or a research group may be composed of several researchers from different disciplines who do not aim to grow in awareness of each other’s methods of enquiry. Interdisciplinarity involves the integration of two or more disciplines in a situation where the resources of a single discipline cannot meet the scope of the problem. Davies and Devlin (2007) propose that there is a continuum of integration. At one end there is relatively little impact of one discipline on another while at the other participants from each discipline combine their expertise to address the question at hand. These types of interactions potentially lead to the development of methodologies and conceptual models new to each of the sub-disciplines (Klein: 1990; Lattuca: 2001; Repko: 2008). Davies and Devlin (2007) note that in some cases the complete integration of two or more disciplines resulting in the ‘dissolving of existing academic boundaries’ may, indeed, lead to the creation of a new discipline as in the case of the relatively new field of comparative phylogeography, which has links to molecular evolutionary genetics, natural history, population biology, historical geography and paleontology (Bermingham & Moritz: 1998). Transdisciplinarity, briefly touched on by Davies and Devlin (2007), may be of particular value in developing future research strategies, by virtue of the way it positions research in relation to ‘trans-sector, problemoriented research involving the participation of stakeholders in society’ (Klein 2008). In a field such as climate adaptation transdisciplinary research has involved extensive collaboration between academic, government agencies and corporate players across local, state, national, and international levels. A transdisciplinary research approach may be essential to solving critical issues currently facing Australia and the world including globalisation, poverty, urbanisation, water, health, food production and environmental degradation (Wu: 2006). However it may also be criticised for generating research that that lacks the ‘methodological rigour, drilling deep, exactness’ that disciplines signify (Weingart & Stehr: 2000). In summary, researchers may take up interdisciplinary work from a range of positions in which they are variously influenced by other disciplinary perspectives, and by non-academic stakeholders in research outcomes.

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THE INTER-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH UNDERTAKING This section explores the conundrum of interdisciplinary research from the perspective of academic leaders, researchers and research higher degree students. It highlights the importance of disciplinary grounding to research credibility and refers to the experience of interdisciplinary research at different career stages. Finally it explores some of the risks and satisfactions which researchers on this intellectual path have described.

The conundrum of interdisciplinary research Interdisciplinary research is very much needed to respond to the problems of our times and the incidence of interdisciplinary work in universities is growing (Kandiko & Blackmore: 2009) The University of Melbourne aims to be better positioned to undertake this kind of work in future (OVC: 2009) and has introduced a substantial Seed Fund Granting Scheme to encourage it. Australian universities feature interdisciplinary centres, laboratories, conferences and programs whilst governments and agencies are seeking research combining disciplinary approaches. The national competitive funding body recognises that research is changing (ARC Peer Review Consultation Process: 2009). Interdisciplinary grants programs such as the ARC Research Networks Program are now available. However, in our investigation many experienced academics suggested that the institutional and career disadvantages outweighed the potential value of being involved in this kind of work. There is evidence to support an encouraging case for the prospects for interdisciplinary research careers, as well as evidence that researchers with an interdisciplinary bent will find it harder to succeed in the university structure in which sector-wide approaches to evaluation and funding are based on disciplinary criteria. This paradox reflects a broader societal and institutional dilemma in which distinct discipline-specific expertise may be perceived as effectual, while collaborative and mixed method approaches to solving problems may be considered less well grounded and difficult to evaluate.

The way of the future: the case for interdisciplinarity The prevalence of electronic media, expansion of technologies such as computation in biomedicine and Geographical Information Systems (GIS), along with the globalised environment in which research takes place, have heightened capacity to address larger scale interdisciplinary problems and raised new research questions. Granting programs such as the European Community’s CORDIS, the US National Science Foundation and the Australian Research Council (ARC) have gradually recognised the need for funding mechanisms to support this work. Problems drive research, and the process of developing international climate change policy is a case in point. The centrality of interdisciplinary research to this endeavour, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s different disciplinary working groups have done much to engender a policy and public view that massive challenges require the collaboration of a wide range of specialists. In Australia, the Garnaut Climate Change Review Final Report (2008) and Ross Garnaut’s (2010) make interdisciplinarity a requirement of future solutions, and this in turn cascades to diverse sectors, from urban planning to human health and food policy. The University of Melbourne Research Institutes have been established on a ‘virtual’ model, and IGS research quantum remains with Faculties. The Institutes reflect a growing trend toward interdisciplinary research consortia, programs and projects, some with significant core funding. Two examples from the field of sustainability and health are The Future Urban Mobility Interdisciplinary Research Group, a collaboration

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Interdisciplinarity in Research between MIT and Singapore University involving 60 faculty (Singapore-MIT: 2009) and The Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) which brings together scientists from 25 different disciplines and three institutions (Yale: 2010).

A New Generation of Research An RHD student in Sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts negotiates with City of Melbourne planners to create a mural over a decommissioned fountain in Collins Street and draws the attention of millions to an environment altered by drought. In Business Information Systems, academics note that their disciplinary expertise is now of value in new areas. Water accounting plays a growing role in a field that was traditionally the stronghold of Engineers. Forensic accountants work alongside lawyers. Disciplines once categorised strictly as a physical sciences now work closely with the life sciences. University of Melbourne Future Generation Professor and electrical engineering researcher Professor Jonathan Manton received a Future Summit 2009 Australian Leadership Award, complemented by funding from the Federal Budget to establish an interdisciplinary Centre for Neural Engineering. Manton sees the following generation of scholars as being broader in their training, problem solving skills and knowledge (MUSSE: 2009), to the extent that a medical researcher will know enough maths to formulate problems, or to be able to tell a mathematician where he should look, and a mathematician will know enough biology to suggest new experiments. However, it should also be noted that in some areas transdisciplinary research has gone on for a number of generations, as in Engineering which has played a historical role in the development of industrial and social infrastructure, providing research services to governments and companies as a matter of course. In other areas interdisciplinary research is regarded as standard, as in the Health Sciences. The University of Melbourne’s Centre for Health and Society has had a sustained focus on interdisciplinary study of health, illness and health care for over 10 years. The perspectives it has brought to the study of medical science, clinical and public health practice and health policy could never have been provided by a single discipline department.

Interdisciplinary Graduate Research There is a trend Australia-wide towards interdisciplinary research higher degree candidatures. University of Melbourne RHD candidates have provided a critical voice on challenges presented by interdisciplinary supervision, for example in a paper by Niselle & Duncan (2009). Our study included a workshop ‘Quality in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Graduate Research’ with the Melbourne School of Graduate Research (MSGR), presented by Professor Cynthia Mitchell, ALTC Fellow in this area. It explored processes that might give confidence to supervisors, examiners and students when evaluating the quality of research that draws on epistemologies, theories, methodologies and approaches spanning disciplines from natural and life sciences, social sciences, and humanities. It highlighted shifts required of supervisors with respect to these candidatures. They include the willingness to critically reflect with the student on the development of a manageable, meaningful, rigorous and relevant research question; the sagacity to encourage research efficiency given the demands of different literatures and theories; the capacity to impart the skills of integration, synthesis and translation; the ability to highlight communication to diverse audiences; and to develop the art of selecting examiners in this space. MSGR set up Graduate Certificate in Advanced Learning and Leadership (GCALL), an interdisciplinary 50-point coursework program in 2009. It aims to complement University of Melbourne PhD study by offering an opportunity to develop key skills in interdisciplinary problem-solving and teamwork to candidates in the final year of study or the year post-completion, in the context of an internationally competitive employment environment. Sixteen students took up subjects ‘Ethical Leadership’ and ‘The Futures Project’ with an emphasis on sustainability.

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Interdisciplinarity in Research Where international opportunities for post-doctoral fellowships are concerned, it is becoming more common to see advertisements for postgraduates which highlight interdisciplinarity: Join a unique interdisciplinary training program in neurogenetic disorders … training involves dual-mentored research bridging two or more disciplines … (University of California Davis NeuroTherapeutics Research Institute: 2010) As a participant in a growing interdisciplinary program, the postgraduate scientist will have a unique opportunity to influence an expanding area of research at the interface of science and society (National Center for Atmospheric Research: 2010) Yet people who occupy such positions may have justifiable worries about their career paths. An engineer who gets a position in a medical research laboratory is not likely to have a future there, and will typically struggle to maintain critical skills due to lack of interaction with appropriate peers. These positions are often as a consequence hard to fill, and may be taken up by people who do not have the brilliant record of achievement in their core discipline associated with career high achievers. To conclude, there is a great deal of activity in the area of interdisciplinary research at this University and elsewhere. This highlights the issue of how interdisciplinary research ought to be done, both now and in future in order to achieve quality outcomes. It raises the question of how such research is assessed, to ascertain whether strategies in place are contributing to intended future outcomes such as new responses to societal developments and problems, and how researchers position themselves, as discussed below.

Vulnerable in a disciplinary environment: the case against interdisciplinarity It is broadly acknowledged that academic career progression is tied to specialised research and building on a singular research focus. Furthermore, it is evident that for many researchers there is little institutional or personal motivation to go outside their own disciplines (Lélé & Norgaard: 2005). Respondents in our study noted that in some disciplines, for example in physics or areas of medicine, researchers are impelled to work more and more narrowly. Mid and later career researchers recognised the dilemma for early career colleagues who have completed deep, narrow PhDs and then undertake further such research in order to successfully obtain ARC grants. There might be conspicuous opportunities for challenging problem-focused interdisciplinary research in which their work would have great societal impact, but they are not an option in the early stages of striving to build a research career. Publishing in one’s core discipline cannot be put on hold for a long period and ARC funding possibilities jeopardised, yet this is a common risk of interdisciplinary networking and project development. Further, if early or mid-career researchers look towards making a career move in this direction, opportunities to find training or experience that would set them up for success are scanty. A general awareness of complex public problems , including ‘wicked problems’ with complex dependencies (Conklin: 2005) has given rise to a general enthusiasm for interdisciplinarity, many researchers noted, without adequate structural and institutional support. They spoke of a range of pitfalls in this kind of work, which we detail in a later section, Pitfalls and Roadblocks.

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Disciplinary Grounding Various disciplinary characteristics play a part in the way in which interdisciplinary research may be understood by an individual trained in a particular discipline. Salter & Hearn (1996) highlight a range of positions in relation to the balance between theory and incremental and or empirical research in any discipline. Our study revealed that some researchers placed emphasis on the importance of theory to their work, which they spoke of as a ‘critical interdisciplinarity’, where others identified their research with the practical developments which they wanted to their research achieve, for example the ability develop an optimised control system. Salter & Hearn put the argument that some disciplines are ‘loosely bounded’ and others ‘tightly bounded’, citing Economics as less penetrable than Sociology, since it applies more rigorous criteria for membership of its community of scholars and more definition on the range of topics to be considered within the discipline. Likewise within disciplines certain academics may be more cautious of loose bounding and the loss of intellectual solidarity while others actively seek expanded research agendas and the inclusion of other disciplinary perspectives (ibid). The majority of researchers in our study felt that all researchers should have a ‘disciplinary home’ and be careful to keep their regular discipline active. Their view was that interdisciplinary research was more of a possibility for senior researchers who were firmly established in their disciplinary specialism, who could afford to take up broader interests without being seen as dabbling or spreading themselves thin. Concerns that interdisciplinary research is not well disciplinarily grounded in may lead to charges that it is questionable in quality, or a camouflage for bad research (Boix Mansilla: 2003; Robinson in Salter & Hearn: 1996). This view is exacerbated by loose or lazy definitions of interdisciplinarity which encourage artificial work, leading to a sense of disenfranchisement if interdisciplinary funding rewards activity that other researchers regard as poor quality. There are still academics whose understanding of interdisciplinary research is that it will not produce anything of value, and some may regard it as basically undesirable. Researchers interviewed recognised significant issues in interdisciplinary RHD candidatures which might put a student at a disadvantage both during their study and later on. This should be made clear to interdisciplinary candidates at the outset. One researcher with an impressive track record identified that he would never advise a PhD student to do interdisciplinary work. He gave four compelling reasons: interdisciplinarity is harder, longer and more complex; universities are not designed to assist it; reviewers and examiners do not work easily in an interdisciplinary space; employers recruit on the basis of mastery even if they say that they want breadth. Yet other researchers noted that there were just as likely to be positive advantages for interdisciplinary RHD students, especially if they were not actively seeking academic careers, which we now go on to discuss.

Interdisciplinary research careers, satisfactions and risks Some researchers that we interviewed indicated that they had had a predisposition for interdisciplinary work in much earlier stages of their careers. This was motivated in some cases by an inclination towards public good research, and in others by prior professional experience which had dictated a need to be involved with a range of specialists, be it social workers, psychologists and educators in the case of human rights law, or policy makers and clinicians in occupational epidemiology. They said that to them interdisciplinarity was ‘natural’ and that they felt comfortable with its complexity. Other researchers’ interdisciplinary journeys had been impelled by the fact that their field of study could be applied to a wide range of real world problems, as in the case of control systems and information management.

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Interdisciplinarity in Research Those working in interdisciplinary projects highlighted the important theoretical gains offered by interdisciplinary practice. They enjoyed the excitement of considering a problem from a completely different perspective. Combining methodologies could greatly enhance the conceptual underpinning of a project. It is noteworthy that the reward of interdisciplinarity was often framed as coming from what was learned in the process, including a greater appreciation and understanding of the fundamentals of their own discipline. There was a high level of satisfaction reported in relation to the linkages made through interdisciplinary work as it developed. While an early stage of interdisciplinary activity might involve discovering the literatures of other disciplines and searching their databases, active collaboration brought the richness of working through the perspectives of different disciplines at the start of a project. This gave a great sense of increasing the value of the research, especially when lead researchers in other disciplines saw potential outcomes they had never previously imagined, or when collective strength led to successful applications for major funding. Various researchers described leveraging international money through their interdisciplinary research and getting ‘an order of magnitude greater results’. Very importantly for researchers’ success, being part of an identified consortium provided a uniform face to government and success in interdisciplinarity was seen as offering credibility should the protagonist be involved in bids for CRCs or other major funding bids. Participants reported other benefits of doing interdisciplinary projects. It enhanced one’s teaching. One developed the capacity to supervise widely. New publication opportunities had arisen with the establishment of interdisciplinary journals. A worthwhile aspect of interdisciplinary work noted by several researchers was that their collegial relationships were extended, in the University and beyond. Opportunities to speak in collaboration with a researcher from another discipline brought their work to the attention of a wider network of researchers. Speaking at public events like the University’s Climate Change Festival of Ideas (2009) highlighted their work to policymakers and the public. In some cases their research outcomes had received a new level of media attention which had assisted in making applied research more effectual. Some successful interdisciplinary researchers could be seen to have jeopardised career progression through their choice of focus. They juggled ‘soft’ income, ran a number of projects at the same time and were more likely to depend on fellowships. Effectiveness in this style of work depends on an individual’s grant writing capacity, to set up new projects and maintain good long-term staff. The dependence of ongoing interdisciplinary work on single staff members without any recourse to reserved block funding was seen as an inevitable impediment to building interdisciplinarity at scale on a sustainable footing. From our investigation, it appears that there are numerous interdisciplinary starting points and ongoing motivators to work across disciplines. However we found no evidence of a discernable formal career path for interdisciplinarians at The University of Melbourne.

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KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL COLLABORATIONS An interdisciplinary project may arise from the research interests of participating researchers. It may be fostered over time or unexpectedly commissioned by a government department or industry group. Research development and collaboration may be a long time in the planning, and lead to enduring relationships and work plans. Like any other research it may come up as a window of opportunity that seems worth acting on quickly. There is a range of useful literature on the success and failure of interdisciplinary collaborations, much of it framed in terms of lessons learned, roadblocks encountered and strategies developed from experience (Miller et al: 2008; Lynch: 2006; Lélé & Norgaard: 2005; Slatin et al: 2004; Sillitoe: 2004). University of Melbourne researchers have insights which corroborate and add something to this literature, in regard to the different stages of developing interdisciplinary research.

Pre-requisites to research development and collaborations Participants in our study regarded the identification of collaborative partners as vital. There is an on-line tool at The University of Melbourne through which one can search for colleagues in other disciplines, Find an Expert, but which appeared to be used infrequently. Rather, a high value was placed on personal recommendation. One person stated that he would be more inclined to explore working further with a researcher he had started a conversation with in the lift, than with someone on an electronic database, and his view was widely supported. Interdisciplinary endeavours rely on trust, openness and the sharing of data and results. Opportunities for face-to-face meetings and opportunities to talk outside project contexts are seen as essential in starting new developments. ‘Interdisciplinary spaces’ were valued, as these serve as meeting places for diverse researchers and their respective disciplines. The Interdisciplinary Research Focus Group we conducted was identified as an opportunity of this nature, as were meetings held by the new Institutes which involved researchers from different faculties. Workshops and seminars which spell out an interdisciplinary topic or intention were another place where scholars with this interest might meet up. The Medical Dental and Health Science Faculty (MDHS) has used a mechanism known as ‘research speed dating’ to foster new collaborations and dialogue in the field of obesity research. These research exchange events brought together people who examine the phenomenon from widely different perspectives such as Public Health, Children’s and Adolescent Health, Clinical Medicine and Research, Science and Economics. The Bio21 cluster fosters interdisciplinary workshops as well. National ICT Australia (NICTA) funds interdisciplinary events such as the ‘ICT for Life Sciences Forum’. Victorian Life Sciences Computational Initiative (VLSCI) has an outreach program around computing in life sciences. The opportunity to develop new skills was identified as another prerequisite to successful interdisciplinary collaboration. An element of this was having some exposure to the literature of interdisciplinarity itself, and having the opportunity to learn about the vocabulary and methods of relevant disciplines. In medicine, science and engineering, researchers also identified the importance of gaining new technical skills or using those acquired through life experience. For example, younger researchers in some biological disciplines have non-academic experience with ICT and thus want to use ICT in their research.

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Leadership and decision structures A 2009 study by Kandiko & Blackmore indicates that there is little literature on interdisciplinary leadership. It highlights the theoretical, epistemological and practical administrative issues which an interdisciplinary leader will traverse in the course of a project, and the human relations skills required to manage them. Drawing on Klein (1990) they situate leadership and management work in three phases: the planning phase in which a team defines terms and clarifies its purpose; the implementation phase in which a ‘bridge person’ must enable an ongoing process between diverse individuals; and a concluding phase involved with publication and evaluation. Further, Kandiko and Blackmore propose that leadership is essential to maintain an emphasis on the quality of the research. ‘The right leader is as important as the right problem,’ suggested one University of Melbourne researcher. ‘Inspiring leadership is the key. People want to work with leaders who can engage them in meaningful work.’ Associated areas of leadership to which those in our study alluded were the development of shared goals and spelling out the decision structure and approach. It was observed that the step of generating ideas came easily especially if there were regular opportunities for collegial discussion, for example during and after seminars. However, moving from an idea on paper required leadership commitment to pulling together the team, finding funding, and expanding the reach of the research. Further, strategic leadership from the University Institutes and Executive would be necessary to draw in larger funders and indeed to influence the government to better support interdisciplinarity. Emphasis was placed on the leadership task of rationalising resources. Each individual or program coming into an interdisciplinary collaboration might believe his or her part of it to be more important than the others, but resources had to be allocated appropriately. Here the leader must project him or herself as a fair person. In large projects they should also play a role in enabling steering or management committees to debate key issues fully. However, it should be said that various researchers also spoke of the way prevalent models of research leadership, in which individual rather than collaborative achievement is the benchmark, impede interdisciplinary research. Leadership could be defined as enabling larger understandings of given questions, whether as a Chief Investigator (CI) A or B 1. Yet reviewers would be unlikely to say “Great, she’s got CI B’s on a number of big projects”. They’d be saying, “She’s got a pretty good track record, but where are her CI A’s?” It has to be ‘your research’ rather than ‘our research’. It cannot simply be research that you have been essential to. Tensions between group and individual achievement and recognition of specific individual contributions to research investigations as a form of leadership warrant further investigation.

Research collaborations An interdisciplinary project requires the right mix of disciplines to address the problem and this is often settled through negotiation between instigating parties. It is important not only to identify the person and their interest in the project, but to attempt to ascertain what each may contribute. This is of particular value in existing projects or close-discipline collaborations inviting the participation of a hitherto unconsidered field of research. Messing (1996) provides a case study in which a sociologist was invited to join a natural science collaboration on a study of workplace ergonomics. This development led to valuable publications, raised new questions and enabled identification of methodological issues of significant relevance to the field. However things did not go well at the start: 1 Terminology used by the main health granting body, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) for Chief and Associate Investigators.

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Interdisciplinarity in Research The more questions she asked, the more I realised that I had no idea of what she could do and that our team was totally unprepared for the integration of a whole new field in a pre-existing project … Anne had to explain to us many times that she needed to gather information from workers on their perceptions of the situation and their attitudes to change (Messing in Salter & Hearn 97-98: 1996). The development of mutual understanding in such collaborations entails what one researcher called ‘high talk transaction costs’, in meetings, discussion and negotiation of jointly authored papers.

The research problem The collaborative group has to make sense of the project, or as one researcher put it, ‘understand the mission’, as well as define the objectives and scope, before they are able to direct their approach effectively and articulate shared goals. Coming to an understanding of different discourses and approaches and devising the way in which the research will be conceptualised and carried out requires trust and communicative skill as suggested by this researcher: ‘It’s not like the core discipline where people understand the language. It requires patience and interest. You need to be a very communicative person. I wanted to learn. I knew I didn’t know about it, and they felt excited explaining.’ There is a need for flexibility in interdisciplinary work. Researchers spoke of the vitality as well as the struggle of reaching agreement. Communication could be excruciating at times but this was leavened by the value and interest of ‘being in conversation’. Team members needed to have patience and the confidence that difficulties could be worked through.

Work practices In practical terms, highly organised work practices sustain interdisciplinary research. This includes the ability to set priorities, maintain meeting schedules and work effectively to project milestones. Budgetary skills that enable efficient decision-making are very valuable, especially since some interdisciplinary endeavours may involve running different financial accounts in different faculties.

Personal traits A fundamental value held by successful interdisciplinary researchers is the willingness to share ideas, literature and data. It appears that they appreciate the work of teams, enjoy the creativity of collaborations and have good skills in communicating in groups. Researchers spoke of the importance of being able to listen and question. As Boix Mansilla (2003) emphasises, interdisciplinary approaches provide provisional answers, not truths, and this is not always comfortable. Equally, openness is needed if one’s own discipline and its view or shortcomings are challenged. The experience of not being able to work with a team member who stuck stolidly to their disciplinary view was raised in our study, as well as approaches to trying to air the problem, or to go around the person in question.

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PITFALLS AND ROADBLOCKS This section outlines features that hamper interdisciplinary collaboration. It highlights everyday time constraints, and touches on questions of epistemological misunderstanding.

Time and commitment ‘Good things take time, as dealing with interdisciplinary research should teach us,’ propose Salter & Hearn, in the opening of their book on interdisciplinarity ‘Outside the Lines’ (1996). This position was universally corroborated by researchers we interviewed. They saw time constraints as the biggest roadblock to developing successful interdisciplinary collaborations. ‘We are all so busy, we are all so behind,’ stated one researcher. Without being asked, researchers highlighted what percentage of time meetings took up in their weekly schedules, in one case as much as 75%. A number of individuals had the extra work of two sets of accounts because their research was outside their faculty. A committed work ethic was seen as a key criterion for success, particularly in the person driving the research, and noted that if this element were missing, there was little chance of getting moving or sustaining momentum. A researcher with some worthwhile experience in interdisciplinary projects also spoke of having observed a lifecycle that began with high enthusiasm, continued by virtue of commitment to the project by key players, but dropped away later, overshadowed by people’s many other commitments. In addition he noted that beyond pilot projects greater commitment, from more than one researcher, seemed to be needed to guarantee success. Further comments about time fell broadly into the categories of early relationship building, conceptual and epistemological clarification to develop a shared vision and self-education. Unless time could be devoted to these aspects of the work, the foundations for ongoing activity could be shaky. Misunderstandings could arise in relation to different conceptual perspectives, to prioritising actions, defining progress and producing outcomes. In externally funded projects the pressure to produce outcomes and meet project milestones and partner expectations, alongside meetings to clarify researchers’ disciplinary premises and communication strategies are very time-consuming. However, it was noted that under-emphasising the time required to communicate across disciplinary cultures would produce frustrations, an unrewarding collaborative research culture and difficulty integrating outcomes. Many aspects of creating research outcomes took longer than single discipline research. Writing papers with collaborators in other disciplines could blow out into long-term projects in themselves, and finding suitable publication outlets and negotiating with editors about the content of papers took a long time. In projects whose outcomes involved the adoption of practice change by the industry partner, it might be hard to guarantee an outcome unless the industry partner committed to further steps such as training programs. Finally it was noted that time taken to reach the point of commercialisation could easily be underestimated. It was frustrating to discover that it took so long to solve the scientific challenges that would bring the research to a point that would enable a company to take up an idea and implement it to get a product going. Skilled researchers put a premium on their time. They regard the development of research collaborations as largely a bottom-up process. Bringing people together into large committees or groups with a view to stimulating interdisciplinary activity was regarded as time-wasting unless the project was very well defined in scope. There might be institutional commitment and financial investment and really good people, but projects that do not move past the ideas stage leave the wrong legacy.

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Epistemological issues Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge, its extent and validity, and, above all, its presuppositions and foundations. With respect to research, epistemological issues and their clarification – what is a relevant question, what counts as evidence, what authority does a perspective hold – account for significant amounts of time and communication and are cited as a particular source of difficulty in the development of interdisciplinary research (Reich & Reich: 2006; Schon:1995; Wickson: 2006). In our investigation researchers spoke of needing to deal with people ‘who have no experience in my area of expertise’ and of the need to ‘convince others of the value of my specialism’, and also of needing to educate themselves in the disciplines of others. Finding the time to do this was part of a commitment to sustaining collaborations. To engage in interdisciplinary work can require considerable self-education in the fields of one’s collaborators. Researchers may also not find ready support to gain skills required for specific aspects of interdisciplinary research and again self-education may be the only way. One researcher spoke of feeling as if he had never done enough homework, and was constantly trying to improve his grasp of other literatures.

Stereotypes Some researchers we interviewed stated that stereotyping between disciplines could hamper interdisciplinary efforts. For example engineers might be seen as devoid of people skills, lawyers dry and exacting, and social scientists ‘soft’ or ‘fuzzy’. They stressed the importance of open-mindedness and humour and recognition of the limitations of one’s own discipline.

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INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS This section addresses the issue of tradition and change in institutions, since interdisciplinary research has different and new requirements from single disciplinary research. It looks at broad aspects of the University that influence interdisciplinarity, at the faculty structure and career progression, and at sustaining interdisciplinary research and interdisciplinary research evaluation.

The Faculty and Departmental structure ‘Realistically, faculties prioritise their own faculties,’ stated one researcher. Another said baldly that interdisciplinary research was likely to ‘annoy the Dean’. The implications of being inconveniently out of sync are relevant to both the research and administrative components of interdisciplinary research, and are crucial to an individual’s career progress. Research conducted in a single faculty clearly indicates commitment to the faculty, where research with another demands time-consuming coordination and meetings as well as expectations which are foreign to the single faculty culture. Single faculty research accords with systems set up by the faculty research offices to assess and maintain a clear summary review of faculty capability and productivity. It is conducted amongst known others, whose status and abilities are broadly familiar, on subjects that are stock-in-trade. Many researchers commented on the difficulties of putting administrative arrangements in place for work across faculties. They gave a number of reasons for this: the priority given by staff to routine faculty-specific tasks; occasional unfamiliarity with processes involving two or more faculties; uncertainty about the priority given to progressing work from one faculty by another faculty. Given the administrative requirements of interdisciplinary research it is important to note the role of nonacademic faculty staff in its success. Research and business managers in the faculties who are sympathetic to interdisciplinary research promote new opportunities. As a case in point, interacting with the new Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute gave the Business and Economics Faculty research manager a fresh insight into faculty members’ research interests, and led to a productive forum in what was a ‘new space’ for the faculty. In interdisciplinary projects and Institutes, those recruited to provide ‘admin support’ should be able to work well outside this role. They must understand the subject area, be able to communicate with senior academics, have an awareness of stakeholders, be able to capture information and research and use the internet, and particularly email, very well. Overall, working outside the faculty was regarded as time-consuming: ‘It’s almost like you’re trying to pull yourself out of your disciplinary culture of the faculty, and it takes enormous energy’.

Career performance and promotion The majority of researchers in our study saw interdisciplinary research in a sector-wide context and noted that the publication criteria of ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia), previously RQF (Research Quality Framework) drive specialisation and research publication planning. The performance appraisal was a subject almost all researchers brought up when asked about their interdisciplinary careers: ‘It doesn’t do much for your promotion. In fact it actively works against it,’ stated one participant in the study. The majority of researchers in our study were pragmatic, taking the view that their achievements outside their own faculty would receive limited acknowledgement. One stated that emphasising interdisciplinary

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Interdisciplinarity in Research activity could be counter-productive to ‘justifying your existence in the uni,’ suggesting that it could even be bad to admit it. Another noted that the time put in to interdisciplinary collaboration building would not come into the performance appraisal. He would not list the ten meetings that he had had with another faculty, but highlight achievements in research endeavours of faculty interest. Some researchers spoke of dispiriting experiences in performance review, in which they were reminded that their interdisciplinary endeavours were best kept in check. One described being subjected to a demeaning analysis of their CV and its publications list which extended beyond ‘relevant’ journals. At the same time various researchers gave credit to the University for elevating Knowledge Transfer, the University’s relationship and engagement with the broader community, into the centre of academic life. They saw potential in having Knowledge Transfer included in performance ratings and allowing them to gain academic credit alongside building a commitment to developing a different set of skills and valuable new networks. There were appreciative accounts given of the Knowledge Transfer Awards ceremony and the way in which it broadens networks both within and outside the University. The literature mentions the vulnerability of untenured academics who choose to take up interdisciplinary research. This was referred to by University of Melbourne researchers in terms of the degree to which academics choose interdisciplinary work have to cultivate expertise outside their own field in their own time, and that this was less of an option for untenured staff members.

Sustaining interdisciplinary research Researchers doing interdisciplinary research at the University are in broad agreement that the University’s mission to encourage this kind of work is correct and should be pursued. Some identified that while core disciplinary areas are reasonably developed, there is great promise in work that connects them, and that this would have societal value. A number of researchers identified an advantage in the role of the new Institutes, especially that they could represent researchers externally and have an influence within the University at a strategic level. Simple things like the Melbourne Research Institutes’ ability to provide an interdisciplinary space for conversations, where people who would never previously have met could talk face to face were seen as having benefit. The first round of the Interdisciplinary Seed Funding Grant Scheme offered in 2009 was welcomed. However, even with this impetus, there was a high level of consensus that current institutional arrangements are inadequate to sustaining this form of research. ‘At this stage it is largely virtual,’ one researcher reported, ‘it’s still at the networks stage’. There were various instances reported of ways in which the seeds of interdisciplinary research can be and are being sown. Breadth subjects had brought together research collaborators through their interactions in subject planning and delivery. This was also true of interdisciplinary research supervision panels. Interdisciplinary RHD scholarships and post-doctoral fellowships were seen as a productive way of getting new projects underway. As previously mentioned, the MDHS Faculty has used discretionary funding to cultivate interdisciplinary connections on research problems relating to obesity, by conducting research exchange events, a mechanism widely used in research in the UK (UCL Knowledge Board: 2008). Professorships and lectureships where the occupant is not formally trained in that field, but brings de facto expertise in the field in which the appointment is made can actively expand research breadth by means of their interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary experience. This is true of the Chair of Construction in Architecture, Building and Planning. Structural arrangements to support interdisciplinary research are regarded as crucial to the success or failure of the enterprise. While epistemological misunderstandings may contribute to the slow development of collaborations, at a practical level a team has to get into the same room in the first place, and continue crossing the campus to meet for a sustained period of time. The likelihood of their doing so is dictated to a large extent by the way their university regards their faculty affiliation, performance, and approach to disseminating their research.

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Interdisciplinarity in Research Structural and institutional characteristics of the university system were identified as hampering the development of interdisciplinary research. Researchers had had experience of inter-faculty and departmental politics and many saw University budget allocation putting decision-making in the hands of Deans, particularly in the Responsible Division Management (RDM) model and that this was to the detriment of university-wide interdisciplinary initiatives. It was noted that faculties that are now ranked as schools are under pressure to meet targets and deal with financial imperatives within their own areas, rather than looking outside them. Finally, it was identified that when departments merge or amalgamate there were significant risks of losing interdisciplinary affiliations and expertise.

Interdisciplinary research evaluation Today, funding is tied to performance measures and ERA which makes rating and counting publications a key part of academic life. As interdisciplinary research activity becomes more acceptable and gains ground, valid and reliable evaluation of research proposals and research outcomes becomes a greater necessity, as evidenced by the ARC’s 2009 consultation on interdisciplinarity. This requirement extends to University committees evaluating Seed Funding Grants, peer reviewers of national and state funded grants and interdisciplinary journal submissions, and examiners of interdisciplinary RHD theses. A better-defined view or framework of interdisciplinary evaluation would in turn assist those who are working towards interdisciplinary outputs, grants and publications. Standard measures, however convenient, cannot predict or provide insight into quality in interdisciplinary research (Boix Mansilla: 2003; National Academies: 2008; Bruce et al: 2004). In an analysis of practices at six Melbourne Research Institutes in the US, Boix Mansilla established that ‘proxy indicators’ such as publications in high impact journals and numbers of funding agencies associated with a particular piece of research were in wide use. A key strength of interdisciplinary research is the power to address previously unsolved questions, yet standard criteria were seen to do little to reveal this or other primary factors of quality definition, such as the fit between a framework and the research data. Likewise University of Melbourne researchers expressed strong reservations about applying available outcome measures to interdisciplinary research. Boix Mansilla makes a major contribution by proposing new areas for evaluation, grounded in a stronger epistemic base. These are: consistency, or a well considered relationship between the tenets of antecedent disciplines; balance, or integrity in coordination of disciplinary contributions to the whole; effectiveness, or predictive or explanatory value, and ‘the leverage provided by newly created hybrid insights’ (2003). Research effectiveness and efficiency are equally of concern to government departments investing in research. A report evaluating the efficiency of research commissioned by the US Environmental Protection Agency (National Academies: 2008) also highlights issues with outcome-based metrics and their quantitative basis. It explores the importance of a qualitative response, alongside measures which put some emphasis on process developments in projects involving a range of parties. Included in the report’s recommendations is the notion that independent advisors should be employed with the specific role of identifying the ‘leverage’ identified by Boix Mansilla, here with a view to determining projects’ value for environmental decision making and to help plan for their application in the field (2008). Unfortunately the following perception would likely have been held by many who have served on committees to adjudicate interdisciplinary research proposals, looking forward to seeing conceptually integrated or possibly controversial new work: If the word Interdisciplinary had been taken out of the applications and they had been judged primarily on the content of the research, the majority would not have been different from applications submitted to conventional granting bodies’ (Salter & Hearn: 1998).

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Interdisciplinarity in Research Focusing clearly on the conceptual and process work of interdisciplinarity can assist reviewers in approaching applicants’ research approach and design to ascertain if it is ostensibly or actually interdisciplinary. Bruce et al. suggest that interdisciplinary review panels should not only have members who provide breadth of expertise across disciplinary fields, but also reviewers with specific interdisciplinary expertise. It is their view that the pressure of a system in which grant funds are highly competitive impels some researchers to make opportunistic applications with overstated or inappropriate claims for the interdisciplinarity of their research proposals (2004). If reviewers are to be rigorous in their expectations and understanding of a good interdisciplinary research project, they should be prepared to provide extra resources for the work over and above single disciplinary research. This concentration on high quality projects would imply that researchers would need to be very specific about what makes an interdisciplinary approach essential to the proposal (2009).

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WAYS FORWARD The following recommendations were made by the Interdisciplinary Research Focus Group held at The University of Melbourne in June 2009: 1. Interdisciplinary work needs to be recognised in performance review, promotion and general professional progress [with the proviso added in follow up interviews that this needs to be on the basis of good understandings of what is interdisciplinary]. 2. The University should make available funded interdisciplinary PhD scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships, since they enable the inception of project work. 3. Senior academics should be prepared to give better advice on interdisciplinary endeavours in the performance review process. 4. Budget models should support interdisciplinary research. 5. ‘Lower level’ seed funding is essential. [Seed funding was introduced after we held the Interdisciplinary Research Focus Group] 6. The option of a semester off for academics to skill up in interdisciplinary area should be made available. 7. Early and mid-career researchers’ interdisciplinary networking, program development and external linkages, and interdisciplinary publishing should be given recognition. 8. Face-to-face events such as forums, dinners and face-to-face meetings over actual problems will cultivate discussion and relationship and should be supported. 9. Opportunities to profile interdisciplinary research, for example, interdisciplinary keynotes and invited talks, could be given support by the University. 10. The Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) must advocate at a Federal and State level in relation to funding for interdisciplinary research. 11. All University of Melbourne editors and members of editorial boards of high impact journals should be identified, with a view to proposing special issues for interdisciplinary research. 12. The University should be wary of definitional metrics on interdisciplinary research, unless definitions and criteria have been developed in close consultation with experienced interdisciplinary researchers.

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CONCLUSION Interdisciplinary research is worthwhile and important, regarded as a vital part of the special skills of many experienced researchers at The University of Melbourne. The University has affirmed its interest in interdisciplinarity with the development of the Melbourne Research Institutes and the inception of the Seed Fund Granting Scheme valued at over $1million per annum over three years. The strategy is intended to stimulate new research questions, collaborations and interactions with public institutions, and to lead to larger interdisciplinary grants and projects. Many researchers see new opportunities in the area and have successful approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration. They face institutional challenges to furthering their work, and making it part of a career path, but are dedicated to the value of the approach, and wrestle with the conundrum of how a strong disciplinebased university navigates the change towards a more interdisciplinary conducive environment. They welcome the Institutes as new interdisciplinary spaces, and numerous senior researchers have committed time voluntarily to their development through committees, ‘theme groups’, and Seed Fund assessment. Based on our preliminary research we suggest that the Institutes and Seed Fund initiative draw attention to issues of interdisciplinary research quality and that these need to be considered in more depth. Interdisciplinary researchers were reluctant to see conventional quantifiable criteria, which they felt would be strained and unnatural, applied to their research, yet they were acutely aware of the problem of funding being awarded to poorly conceptualized ‘faux’ interdisciplinary research. To deal with this problem it will be necessary to develop criteria which can be used by assessors with confidence, both to award funding and judge its success. These are likely to be more robust if developed in conjunction with experienced researchers. Boix Mansilla’s research has identified that criteria regularly used to judge research are not adequate to the task, and provides a useful starting point. In interdisciplinary research broader issues of consistency, balance and effectiveness need to be examined. The University is particularly interested in what leverage will be created by new hybrid insights in terms of offering new explanations and opportunities to act, and this is the kind of question which warrants discussion by those charged with making decisions about project funding. At the same time, given the size of the Seed Granting Fund, we recommend that an evaluation is conducted to explore what contributed to the success of particular funding decisions, and particular projects. This will enable the critical development of the initiative in such a way that funders and recipients are able to contribute to its ongoing success, and to the future flourishing of interdisciplinary research at the University.

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Interdisciplinarity in Research Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology (SMART) (2009) ‘Future Urban Mobility is SMART’s Fourth IRG’ (http://web.mit.edu/SMART/news/smart-pr-nov01.html), accessed 15.01.2010 Slatin, C. Galizzi, M. Devereaux Melillo, K. Mawn, B. (2004) ‘Conducting interdisciplinary research to promote healthy and safe Employment in health care: promises and pitfalls’ Public Health Reports, Jan-Feb. Smith J.A. & Carey, G. E. (2007). ‘Those who are crossing boundaries need less talk, more help and flexibility’. Nature 447:638. University of California Davis Neurotherapeutics Research Institute http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ntri/training.html), accessed 22.01.10 University College London (2008), Knowledge Board, see http://www.knowledgeboard.com/item/417/23/5/3, accessed 12.2.2008 University of Melbourne (2007) The University of Melbourne Plan, a Strategic Overview Water Science and Technology Board (WTSB) (2004), Confronting the Nation’s Water Problems: The Role of Research, National Academies Press Wear, D. N. (1999). ‘Challenges to interdisciplinary discourse’. Ecosystems 2:299-301. Weingart, P. & Stehr, N. (2000). Practicing Interdisciplinarity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Wickson F, Carew, A and Russell, A. (2006) ‘Transdisciplinary research characteristics, quandaries and qualities’. Futures 38 (9) 1046-1059 Wu, J. (2006). ‘Landscape ecology, cross-disciplinarity, and sustainability science’. Landscape Ecology (2006) 21:1-4.

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