2014 Interdisciplinary Conference

Transfusion and Transformation: the Creative Potential of Interdisciplinary Knowledge Exchange

An international conference hosted by the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, July 15^th-17^th 2014

Call for Panels – Deadline September 30^th 2013

This international conference examines the creative potential of interdisciplinarity, exploring how the comparison and exchange of disciplinary approaches can offer fresh insights and spark new lines of thought, not only complementing the strengths of more focused disciplinary approaches, but also comprising an important part of the process through which all disciplines negotiate, develop and transform over time.

Interdisciplinary collaboration requires researchers to leave their familiar disciplinary territories and enter unfamiliar intellectual spaces. It requires a willingness to engage with and learn from people who have very different understandings of the world, different practices, and – quite often – different beliefs and values. The transfusion of these can produce what Meyer and Land have called ‘troublesome knowledge’.¹

Like Adam and Eve disciplinary specialists tend to find it difficult to leave the comforting Eden of their discipline, to cross the boundary into interdisciplinarity… an encounter with the wise and provocative serpent of troublesome knowledge might be required to occasion the ontological shift required, though the recipe of transformation may well be a degree of ‘ontological insecurity’ (Giddens 1991)² or ‘boundariless anxiety’ (Bergquist 1995)³ . (Meyer and Land 2011: 7)

But comparative exchanges can also encourage highly creative approaches to research, generating new theoretical directions, innovative methods and original outcomes. By exchanging knowledges, interdisciplinary collaboration has the potential to generate new thinking and transform the way that participants think about their own work. This can be tremendously exciting and rewarding.

As well as exploring the theoretical and methodological challenges afforded by interdisciplinary collaboration, this conference will therefore highlight the opportunities that it offers, seeking papers or posters concerned with cases in which creative comparisons and transfusions of knowledge have served to transform research, teaching, and academic disciplines themselves. It aims to showcase leading interdisciplinary research and to bring together people who have conducted (or are interested in conducting) collaborative projects. In doing so, it hopes to encourage fresh discourses about interdisciplinarity, to suggest productive ways to integrate diverse disciplinary perspectives, and to establish new intellectual common ground.

[Related texts

College of Fellows

In addition to an open call for panels, the Institute for Advanced Study will invite its former Fellows to submit panel proposals reflecting the annual themes under which they undertook Fellowships in Durham. IAS themes to date include: The Legacy of Charles Darwin; Modelling; Being Human; Water; Futures; Time and Light. There is also potential to link with the 2014-15 theme: Emergence, and Durham’s major interdisciplinary project on Tipping Points, which is central to the IAS’s activities in that year. As well as encouraging its College of Fellows to reunite in Durham in 2014, these panels will be open to other researchers with interests in these themes.

Institutes of Advanced Study

A further panel is proposed, inviting representatives from other Institutes of Advanced Study around the world, to enable an international comparison of universities’ diverse efforts to facilitate interdisciplinary research.

Timetable

The call for panels is now open, and all panel proposals should be submitted by September 30^th, 2013 (to ias.conference2014@durham.ac.uk). Panels will be announced in early November 2013, at which point there will be a call for papers. Paper abstracts should be no more than 500 words in length, and should be submitted by January 30^th 2014 (see: submission information).

If you have any queries please contact the Conference Administrator Linda Crowe (linda.crowe@durham.ac.uk).

The Conference Committee

Professor Veronica Strang (veronica.strang@durham.ac.uk)

Professor Barbara Graziosi, (barbara.graziosi@durham.ac.uk)

Professor Stuart Elden (stuart.elden@durham.ac.uk)

Professor Martin Ward (martin.ward@durham.ac.uk).

Professor Ray Land (ray.land@durham.ac.uk

Professor Tom McLeish (pvc.research@durham.ac.uk)

Plenary Speakers

Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern (Cambridge University). Leading anthropologist and author of Commons and Borderlands: working papers on interdisciplinarity, accountability and the flow of knowledge, Wantage: Sean Kingston (2004).

Professor Ray Land (Durham University). Author of ‘Crossing Tribal Boundaries: interdisciplinarity as a threshold concept’ in T. Becher, P. Trowler, V. Bamber and M. Saunders (eds) Academic Tribes and Territories: intellectual enquiry and the culture of disciplines, 3^rd edition. Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press (2011).

• Registration
• Call for papers (abstract and paper submission)
• Draft conference schedule
• Keynote Speakers
• Travel
• Accommodation