About Interdisciplinary Research
Authors of a recent report from the National Academies of Science declared that “Interdisciplinary research is rapidly becoming an integral feature of research.” Individuals and collaborative groups engage in interdisciplinary research for many reasons, but the report attributes this trend to four powerful intrinsic and extrinsic “drivers”:
- the inherent complexity of nature and society,
- the desire to explore problems and questions that are not confined to a single discipline
- the need to solve societal problems
- the power of new technologies.
- (Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research. 2004, p. 2)
The trend appears across the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professions. Many key topics today are interdisciplinary, including nanotechnology, cancer, conflict, and inequality. Generative technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging are enhancing research capabilities in many fields, and the borrowing of quantitative and qualitative methods across disciplinary boundaries has become commonplace. New research on the mind, the body, the family, the earth, and the solar system is blurring traditional boundaries, while new understandings of language, culture, and history are transforming the way we think about print and digital texts. Interdisciplinary fields and hybrid disciplines have also become part of the landscape of higher education, from the early models of area studies and American studies to environmental studies, criminology, and materials science to the current expansion of cultural studies, information sciences, gerontology, and molecular biology.
