Unlock
disruptive
reciprocity

unexpected
ideas changed together

no clear ‘lead’
only each other.

I wrote this poem at the beginning of my PhD journey. I was trying to make sense of what UK Research and Innovation meant by ‘interdisciplinary research’ in their Cross Research Council Responsive Mode Pilot Scheme. I was also grappling with my own understanding of what the term entailed, having undertaken a supposedly interdisciplinary master’s degree many years ago. I am still haunted by a professor’s caution about being too much ‘inter’ and not enough ‘discipline’. Fast forward to now, and I have met colleagues who proudly describe themselves as ‘multidisciplined’ and even ‘undisciplined’.

Why all the fuss about interdisciplinarity?

Most of us are familiar with this highly celebrated, but somewhat fuzzy term. Indeed, calls to ‘be interdisciplinary’ is an almost inescapable turn of phrase within higher education institutions. Recognising that many of the problems we face today require the combined efforts of more than one discipline and/or profession, interdisciplinarity is the modus operandi for much funded research.

Of course, interdisciplinarity has been discussed and conceptualised (formally, at least) since the early 1970s. Over the years, there have been many attempts to define it and develop measures by which to evaluate its ‘success’. Many of you might be familiar with frog spawn diagrams that attempt to show the differences between multi-, cross-, inter-, and transdisciplinary approaches. To what extent must one discipline be integrated within another? Is it just methodological borrowing, or creating an entirely new approach? Is it just within academia, or must external stake-holders be in the mix?

Regardless of how we choose to define it, when it comes to articulating these approaches in practice, there are few empirical studies exploring the nuances of working in, across, and between disciplines. In times when so much is at stake for our planet, and for each other, furthering our understanding of how we engage with interdisciplinarity, and its promises, feels even more pressing.

Why Creative Club?

In many ways, ‘creativity’ – as part of an aspirational skill-set – has become instrumentalised in much the same way as interdisciplinarity. Calls to ‘be creative’ also resound loudly, echoing within purpose-built spaces amidst a plethora of toolkits and toolboxes for ‘supporting creativity’. Certainly, the irony of designing a Creative Club for undertaking my research is not lost on me!

However, studies suggest that creative practices could offer sharper insights into how we might meaningfully engage in interdisciplinary ways of working. For example, Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholarship has demonstrated how art-science collaborations disrupt, subvert and create through encounters between apparently very different disciplines. Importantly, these studies trouble the notion that art is merely there to ‘facilitate’ or ‘communicate’ on behalf of science – a common, but potentially very damaging, assumption. Rather, the differences and resemblances, the tensions and slippages, between arts and sciences releases potential for new methodological, epistemological, and ontological spaces to emerge.

Where creativity, knowledge-making, and notions of ‘discipline’ have been explored, STS has largely focussed on interventions in the physical and biological sciences, usually in studio-lab contexts. I am interested in what happens within the university setting, amongst staff from across a range of disciplines and professional roles. Through techniques such as collage, poetry, and performance, the Creative Club invites participants to express, share, and release different ways of knowledge-making.

First impressions from ‘the field’…

So far, I have observed and partially analysed two Early Bird Taster Workshops. One involved collaging, poetry and zine-making to explore professional biographies. The other took inspiration from comics and cartoons to explore how we might process our research and professional work differently.

I have a long way to go, and many different methods to explore, but some initial observations and reflections are:

• Engaging in creative activity can be a short-circuit to personal and emotional responses, which enlivens our work and research in surprising ways.
• The seemingly simple, silly, and “naff” are deeply formative in our relationship to work, research, and our research subjects and objects.
• The pleating together of personal and professional identities through creative explorations prompts further inquiry into what is valued, or deemed acceptable, in the practice of knowledge-making within the university.