Pixel International Conferences

Interdisciplinarity is the combination of selected parts of two or more existing disciplines to create what is essentially a new discipline that straddles the parent disciplines. In this paper, some reflections on interdisciplinarity are presented based on the author’s experience of more than twenty five years teaching bioprocess engineering as a minor subject of an interdisciplinary programme in biotechnology. Literature on interdisciplinary education is reviewed and the fundamental challenges faced in the delivery of interdisciplinary programmes are outlined. These include (i) the design of the programme itself (what should be taught), (ii) learning challenges for students who might have to integrate disciplines that require very different approaches to study and learning, (iii) challenges for academics whose research might be firmly embedded in a narrow discipline and who may have difficulty pitching material at a level appropriate for an interdisciplinary audience, and (iv) logistical challenges, especially when laboratory sciences are involved.

For an interdisciplinary programme to remain true to the interdisciplinary ethos, it needs to be designed and planned with great care, but, crucially, it requires constant management to maintain the original interdisciplinary vision in the face of ongoing changes in the university environment. In addition, it needs ongoing ‘buy-in’ from the school’s academic staff, even as individual staff resign or retire and are replaced by new staff. Otherwise the programme will drift into unintended multidisciplinarity with the potential to become somewhat disjointed.