Interdisciplinary Teaching and Research Initiatives

The Office of the Provost is committed to nurturing impactful, faculty-initiated research and teaching that integrates disciplines and promotes synergies among faculty by providing seed funding for research projects and team-taught course development and implementation, cultivating opportunities for faculty collaboration, and curating resources and workshops on conceptual and procedural interdisciplinarity.

Questions? Contact Dr. Kate E. Temoney, Department of Religion Chairperson and Special Advisor to the Provost for Interdisciplinary Initiatives.

What is Interdisciplinarity?

*Summation of “Defining ‘Interdisciplinary,’” an Association for Interdisciplinary Studies Resource

A definition of interdisciplinarity is unsettled, and can be pursued by a single scholar or among many, but there is an emerging consensus that it involves several key components:

• Interdisciplinarians focus on particular problems or questions that are too complex to be answered satisfactorily by any one discipline.
• Interdisciplinarians draw upon the insights of specialized research, fostered by communities of scholars who share a set of guiding questions and concepts and utilize  multiple theories, and methods.·
• Interdisciplinarians integrate the best elements of disciplinary insights in order to generate a more comprehensive (and often more nuanced) appreciation of the issue at hand. This may come in the form of a new understanding, new product, or new meaning–often with a stress on ‘integration’ as the defining element.