Interdisciplinarity
Related terms: collaboration, disciplines, humanities, science
Interdisciplinarity is commonly understood as (a) a condition of constructive relations among some set of academic disciplines or fields of study in connection with some topic, problem, or project of broad or mutual interest, usually with the implication of cordial ongoing or ad hoc interactions among their respective practitioners, or (b) the property of containing, displaying, or drawing significantly on ideas, findings, or methods from multiple fields of study.
Understandings of the concept are quite variable, however, as is the usage of the term interdisciplinary (Frodeman, Klein, and Pacheco, 2017). Thus, some scholars of the subject distinguish interdisciplinarity from multidisciplinarity, understood as an association of multiple fields of study without the implication of significant interactions among practitioners. Similarly, the term cross-disciplinary is sometimes used to suggest relations between fields of study that are notably different from each other. Also, interdisciplinarity is often associated and sometimes identified with transdisciplinarity, itself variably understood as (a) maximally inclusive, fluid, and borderless relations among all academic fields, or (b) directing some portion of academic activities towards public concerns and nonacademic audiences, or (c) drawing, in some academic project, on the experiences, ideas, and practices of relevant nonacademic groups – for example, in environmentalist projects, local or indigenous communities – or including members of such groups in all activities and productions.
Interdisciplinarity has long been seen as a counter to tendencies towards intellectual and institutional insularity in fields of study and towards overspecialization in scholars. In the postwar years, concerns over such tendencies, along with other intellectual and institutional pressures, led to the establishment of centres of interdisciplinary research in many universities and colleges as complements to existing academic departments. More recently, interdisciplinarity has been invoked as a desirable or necessary counter to the dominance of some area of broad interest by an unduly narrow set of academic fields: for example, the study of environmental topics largely by STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields, with limited representation of the social sciences and minimal representation of the humanities (see, e.g., Holm et al. 2013; Brondizio et al. 2016; Walsh 2019).
Departments and centres of environmental studies, now found globally, began to be established in universities and colleges in Europe and the Americas in the 1960s and 1970s, largely in response to growing public awareness of toxic chemicals, land erosion, air and water pollution, and other environmental ills damaging or threatening to humans. Intrinsically multidisciplinary, their faculty is typically drawn mainly from some set of earth sciences, for example, ecology, geology, hydrology, and atmospheric science, often with some representation of engineering and the health sciences, for example, toxicology, and, increasingly, also of some set of social sciences, for example, economics or political science.
Declarations of the desirability or imperative of interdisciplinarity are recurrent throughout the academic world and increasingly prominent in environmentalist contexts, notably in articles by environmental researchers and in statements by upper administrators and foundation heads. In the latter contexts, such declarations are often attended by rather belated observations of, as it is said, the “human dimensions” of environmental conditions (our era has been called the Anthropocene for some time) and, accordingly, the potential value of contributions from the humanities to their study. Reference is also commonly made to the need, accordingly, to bridge what is commonly described as a gap or divide between the sciences and the humanities. Efforts to make good on these declarations, provoked in part by increasing environmental interests and often aggressive environmental concerns among students and younger faculty in the humanities, can be seen both in the increasing number of humanities fields represented in existing departments of environmental studies and also, alongside them, in the appearance of interdisciplinary centers or programs of environmental study led largely by humanities faculty.
As detailed in institutional reports and on websites, such centers typically sponsor a variety of activities, many of them collaborative, involving faculty from established humanities fields, for example, history, literary studies, and visual arts, together with faculty from closely related social science or multidisciplinary fields, for example, anthropology, media studies, or science and technology studies (see, e.g., Trinity College 2025; Yale University 2025). Activities generally focus on designing and teaching courses, supervising the work of affiliated students, organising conferences and lecture series, and conducting and publishing research. In many places, they also feature some transdisciplinary activities, for example, arranging local art displays, concerts, or film showings. While the environmental research of humanities faculty and students in these programs often draws on current scientific findings related to the topic at hand, it usually draws most centrally on materials and ideas developed in their particular fields and on methods and skills associated more or less distinctively with the humanities: human experiences, conduct, and views; contemporary and archival texts, images, and artifacts; analysis, criticism, interpretation, and performance.
Scholars in the environmental humanities, often reflecting a strong personal sense of justice endorsed by humanistic traditions, have demonstrated how human creations promote or deflect Anthropocene concerns and environmentalist responses. In books, articles, conferences, and courses, researchers and teachers in literary, cultural, and media studies have explored how fictional works, films, photographs, and broadcast journalism have exposed or obscured the existence and sources of environmental damage. Historians have detailed the development and analysed the motives of conservation movements; philosophers have articulated ideas of environmental justice; scholars in religious studies have considered how religious teachings and traditions have fostered care for the natural environment or justified its domination and exploitation. Through these and other activities, scholars in the humanities have drawn attention to subtle features of the natural world, deepened understandings of the cultural, historical, and psychological dynamics of environmental destruction and loss, aroused concern about existing and long range effects of changing planetary conditions, and influenced the disposition of students and other audiences to act responsively and appropriately. Though not as widely recognised as some scientific accounts or as publicly visible as some activist efforts, these activities are neither altogether cloistered nor without significant effects.
Strong advocates of environmentalist interdisciplinarity have, for some years, chastised humanities scholars for not engaging more directly with scientists, planners, and policy-makers (see, e.g., Castree 2014). Although these critics sometimes note impediments to cross-disciplinary engagements, they commonly brush them aside and also forget the obstacles faced by most academics, scientists included, in efforts to influence environmental policies to any significant extent. As widely attested, problems of collaboration and communication arise recurrently in interdisciplinary projects even when the fields involved are historically and otherwise close (see, e.g., Weingart and Padberg 2014; Brister 2016). Academic disciplines are also cultures and share many features with ethnic, regional, and other cultures, including distinctive verbal idioms, esoteric practices, and strong insider/outsider biases. In interdisciplinary projects involving scientists and humanities scholars, potentially alienating features also arise from the historically distinct epistemic orientations and aims of their respective fields as reflected in, among other things, the different talents they attract, the different skills and professional achievements they value, and the distinctive intellectual styles and personal temperaments often displayed by their respective practitioners.
Given their commonly shared appreciation of the starkness of current planetary crises and, in many places, their shared vulnerability to current expressions of anti-academic and anti-expert sentiments, most scientists and humanities scholars probably have little taste, these days, for the kinds of protracted public hostilities displayed earlier in this century. Nevertheless, attempts to bridge the familiar divides continue to run into the familiar problems, even where cordial and constructive interactions are earnestly pursued by equally climate-conscious and conscientious scientists and humanities scholars. Some of these problems reflect the longstanding prestige differential between scientists and humanities scholars in both academic and broader public contexts and the related status differential in the authority of their respective offerings. For example, observers of environmental projects note the largely one-way traffic of intellectual goods across whatever bridges between the two are built, with observations, analyses, cautions, and recommendations from the humanities taken on board only downstream, after the scientific research has been completed and, where such are involved, the crucial planning calculations have been made or policy proposals framed (Emmett and Zelco 2014; Castree 2021).
Other obstacles to engagement between environmental humanities scholars and potential collaborators arise from more general developments in the humanities and closely related fields of study over the past quarter of a century, many of them reflecting changing demographics across the academic world and attendant shifts of intellectual interests, political views, and social concerns. For example, in examining causes and effects or drawing conclusions in environmentalist projects and publications, humanities scholars often broach or feature feminist and other identity-based social concerns along with the progressive political views now found among many humanities scholars. While environmental scientists may share many of these views and concerns, the need to protect an epistemic authority based on claims to scientific objectivity makes them generally averse to overt political advocacy or the appearance of personal bias in professional contexts. Similarly problematic for cross-disciplinary engagement is the posthumanist extension of a more general solicitude among humanities scholars for marginalised or devalued human groups to all beings – biotic, sentient, and other – in what is now routinely referred to as the “more-than-human” world. While many environmental humanities scholars are now comfortable with the idea of awarding not only legal and moral standing but also something like intentional agency to rivers, trees, and other features of the natural environment, most biologists and geologists, committed to the naturalistic ethos of Western science and historically wary of “anthropomorphism” and “vitalism,” are likely to find such views – for example, the idea of justice owed to insects, oceans, or mountain ranges – perplexing at best.
Although commended and pursued across the academic world, interdisciplinarity, not surprisingly, has its critics and sceptics (see, e.g., Jacobs and Frickel, 2009; MacLeod and Nagatsu, 2018). Especially telling are reports by formerly strong advocates evidently chastened by interdisciplinary experience (see, e.g., Klenk and Meehan 2015; Castree 2021). In most cases, critics acknowledge desirable features of interdisciplinarity but stress the value of maintaining distinct fields of study with individually well-honed methods of inquiry, continuously developing bodies of knowledge, and established traditions of training, evaluation, and certification. In environmentalist ventures, as in interdisciplinary ventures generally, efforts to master technically detailed bodies of knowledge or subtle skills can yield flagrantly skewed or fumbling understandings; efforts to combine descriptions or explanations from widely differing fields can yield incoherent, pointless accounts; efforts at cordial and constructive interaction can break down in disappointment and abandonment. Often enough, however, such ventures do, as hoped and promised, enlarge participants’ store of useful skills and crucial knowledge, disrupt over-sedimented ideas and approaches, illuminate complex problems from duly diverse angles, and disclose more effective ways to advance, jointly or individually, towards whatever ends are sought.
References
Brister, Evelyn. 2016. “Disciplinary Capture and Epistemological Obstacles to Interdisciplinary Research: Lessons from Central African Conservation Disputes.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 56: 82–91.
Brondizio, Eduardo S., Karen O’Brien, Xuemei Bai, Frank Biermann, Will Steffen, Frans Berkhout, Christophe Cudennec, Maria Carmen Lemos, Alexander Wolfe, Jose Palma-Oliveira, and Chen-Tung Arthur Chen. 2016. “Re-Conceptualizing the Anthropocene: A Call for Collaboration.” Global Environmental Change 39: 318–27.
Castree, Noel. 2014. “The Anthropocene and the Environmental Humanities: Extending the Conversation.” Environmental Humanities 5: 233-60.
Castree, Noel. 2021. “Environmental Humanities.” In International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment & Technology, edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael F. Goodchild, Audrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston, 6:1–25. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Emmett, Rob, and Frank Zelko, eds. 2014. Minding the Gap: Working Across Disciplines in Environmental Studies. RCC Perspectives 2014 (2).
Frodeman, Robert, J. T. Klein, and Roberto T. Pacheco, eds. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Holm, Poul, Michael Evan Goodsite, Sierd Cloetingh, Mauro Agnoletti, Bedrich Moldan, Daniel J. Lang, Rik Leemans, Joergen Oerstroem Moeller, Mercedes Pardo Buendía, Walter Pohl, Roland W. Scholz, Andrew Sors, Bernard Vanheusden, Kathryn Yusoff, and Ruben Zondervan. 2013. “Collaboration between the Natural, Social and Human Sciences in Global Change Research.” Environmental Science & Policy 28: 25–35.
Holmes, George, Jonathan Carruthers-Jones, Graham Huggan, Eveline R. de Smalen, Katie Ritson, and Pavla Šimková. 2022. “Mainstreaming the Humanities in Conservation.” Conservation Biology 36: e13824.
Jacobs, Jerry, and Scott Frickel. 2009. “Interdisciplinarity: A Critical Assessment.” Annual Review of Sociology 35: 43–65.
Klenk, Nicole, and Katie Meehan. 2015. “Climate Change and Transdisciplinary Science: Problematizing the Integration Imperative.” Environmental Science & Policy 54: 160–67.
MacLeod, Miles, and Michiru Nagatsu. 2018. “What Does Interdisciplinarity Look Like in Practice? Mapping Interdisciplinarity and Its Limits in the Environmental Sciences.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 67: 74–84.
Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities. Trinity College, Dublin. Accessed March 3, 2025.
Walsh, Linda. “Decentering Science in Climate Communication.” In: Communicating the Climate: From Knowing Change to Changing Knowledge, edited by Katrin Kleemann and Jeroen Oomen, RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society 2019, no. 4, 15–22.
Weingart, Peter, and Britta Padberg. 2014. University Experiments in Interdisciplinarity: Obstacles and Opportunities. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Yale Environmental Humanities. Yale University, New Haven. Accessed March 3, 2025.