Creating interdisciplinary education within monodisciplinary structures: the art of managing interstitiality

ABSTRACT

The literature on interdisciplinary higher education is influenced by two overall trends: one looks at the institutional level of specially designed interdisciplinary institutions, while the other assesses individual interdisciplinary educational activities. Much less attention is given to the processes of creating interdisciplinary education initiatives within traditional monodisciplinary universities. In this study, we thus explore how interdisciplinary education and teaching emerge and develop within universities that have little or no established infrastructure to support interdisciplinarity. Using qualitative data from a multi-part case study, we examine the development of diverse interdisciplinary educational efforts within a traditional faculty-structured university in order to map the ways in which interdisciplinary educational elements have been created, supported, challenged or even strengthened by pre-existing monodisciplinary structures. Drawing on theories from economics, literature studies and sociology of education, we conclude that creating interdisciplinary education in such settings demands skills that we define as the ‘art of managing interstitiality’.

KEYWORDS:

• Interdisciplinary activities
• faculty-structured university
• higher education
• managing interstitiality
• student pathways

Acknowledgements

The study behind this paper was conducted as part of the project ‘Interdisciplinary Education’ at the University of Copenhagen. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the members of the project and of the individual respondents who contributed to the research. We would also like to thank the Augustinus Foundation, the Knud Hoejgaard Foundation and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at University of Edinburgh for the support that made the writing of the paper possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Katrine Lindvig http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7654-7748

Catherine Lyall http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4814-7357

Laura R. Meagher http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0485-9851

Notes

1 Of those completing a bachelor’s degree in 2012 at a Danish university, 85% were enrolled in a master’s programme one year later.