Abstract
Who drives the intellectual agenda for interdisciplinary research within our universities? This chapter highlights the importance of informal networks, shared physical spaces, and attention to personal relationships and soft skills. It introduces the idea of interdisciplinary research as slow research and the implications that this has within the modern academy. In attempting to foster high profile, top down interdisciplinary initiatives, university leaders are revealed to be out of step with interdisciplinary researchers who are striving for ways to establish more meaningful research engagements, often through less structured, serendipitous encounters.
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Notes
- 1.
This expression arose spontaneously as a result of our discussions about what forms of support their universities offered for interdisciplinary research and was not one that I introduced in the interview questions.
- 2.
Global Challenges Research Fund www.ukri.org/research/global-challenges-research-fund/.
- 3.
Vallery-Radot, R. (1920), The Life of Pasteur (London, Constable and Company) cited in Merton (2004, p. 163).
- 4.
At the time that interviews were taking place in the UK, members of the University and College Union were taking strike action in protest at changes to their pension scheme.
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Lyall, C. (2019). Facilitating Serendipity?. In: Being an Interdisciplinary Academic. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18659-3_5
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