INCHER Lunchtime talk 8. Mai 2024: The promise and peril of interdisciplinarity: Academic identity and engagement in interdisciplinary practice

Lecturer Professorin Dr. Karri A. Holley (Department of Educational Leadership, Policy and Technology Studies, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA)

Abstract:  The ability to move beyond the disciplinary boundaries which have traditionally controlled the behaviors of academic researchers is positioned as an essential component of the 21st century knowledge system. However, interdisciplinarity is often associated with critiques of the neoliberal and entrepreneurial university. Such university cultures prioritize innovation and knowledge connected to marketization and commercialization. This presentation examines the question of academic identity and engagement in interdisciplinary practice from the perspective of university faculty. Drawing on qualitative data collected through interviews with faculty from a range of academic disciplines (social sciences, humanities, and STEM) at an American research university, the themes explore how faculty perceive interdisciplinary practices as holding both promise and peril.

 Higher education scholars have identified academic disciplines as “tribes and territories” as well as distinct cultural communities; more recent scholarship on interdisciplinarity considers the cross-fertilization of intellectual ideas and knowledge to be a joy of academic life, a theme echoed by the faculty in this study. While such connections do not negate the global dominance of neoliberalism as an ideology in higher education, they do suggest that faculty might find individual personal rewards through interdisciplinary engagement. Faculty may find interdisciplinary practices to be of benefit to academic identity, but such practices all too often occur under the looming market-driven umbrella of commercialization. From an institutional perspective, interdisciplinary knowledge is a knowledge that needs to have value, a definition that does not always align with the personal interests and individual rewards prioritized by faculty engaged with such work.

This presentation concludes by exploring ways to manage this tension in theory and practice. Researchers should use caution in wholly negating interdisciplinarity as a practice with negative consequences, and instead recognize the complex individual faculty behaviors for engaging in interdisciplinary work. Consideration instead should be given to the importance of institutional space for exploring the crucial role of knowledge to academic identity and development. Such a role balances the critique of embracing interdisciplinarity as a sole vehicle for innovation and allows for individual exploration and growth.

Dr. Karri Holley is Professor of Higher Education at The University of Alabama. She received her Ph.D. and M.Ed. from the University of Southern California, and a B.A. from The University of Alabama. Her research broadly examines the organizational, cultural, and economic influences on the structure and processes of the contemporary university, with an emphasis on graduate education. Holley has also written extensively on interdisciplinary work in higher education as well as narrative structure and the writing process related to qualitative inquiry.

The INCHER lectures in summer semester 2024 are hybrid events.
Zoom participation only after prior registration (koch@incher.uni-kassel.de)

Venue: INCHER, University of Kassel, meeting room 4102, Mönchebergstraße 17
34125 Kassel