Innovation through border-crossing: Challenges of interdisciplinary, international collaborations

1
Innovation through border-crossing Challenges of
interdisciplinary, international collaborations

• Univ. Prof. Dr. Ulrike Felt
• Department of Social Studies of Science,
  Universität Wien
• Ulrike.Felt_at_univie.ac.at
• http//www.univie.ac.at/virusss
• 2nd Austrian Slovak Science Day
• Workshop C Possible interdisciplinary
  co-operation between Natural Sciences,
  Technology, Humanities and Social Sciences
• Bratislava, December 6th, 2005

2
Research crossing disciplinary and national
boundaries

• Challenges of Biomedicine - Socio-cultural
  Contexts, European Governance and Bioethics (6th
  Framework Programme)
• comparative interdisciplinary project exploring
  the interrelation between socio-cultural
  conditions and ethical and legal framing of
  medical research and practice. It poses the
  question to what extent concepts of identity on
  the cultural, bioethical and political level are
  influenced by biomedicine and, conversely, shape
  and regulate the medical practice themselves. (6
  2 countries and a large variety of disciplines
  involved)
• Informed Consent as a space of negotiation
  between biomedicine and society (funded under
  TRAFO, Austrian Ministry for Education, Research
  and Culture)
• establish a transdisciplinary space in which
  informed consent (for non-therapeutic research)
  will be reflected in a context sensitive way from
  different perspectives. We want to investigate
  how the different types of information are
  understood and negotiated, what concepts of the
  body are performed, the ways in which the
  relation of biomedicine and society is regulated
  and how this has an impact on clinical practice.
  (cooperation medicine/science studies)

3
Some reflections from these experiences

• What does international/interdisciplinary
  cooperation mean for project partners and the
  coordinator?
• chronic underestimation of time needed to work in
  interdisciplinary teams
• different work traditions that need to be closely
  monitored and reflected
• new ways of addressing issues (new vocabulary
  same notions-differrent meanings)
• methodological challenges (increased awareness of
  the possibilities and limitations of methods)
• different expectations and understandings of
  project outcomes
• Finding a common language barrier or challenge?
• English is generally a first choice as language
  of communication that opens possibilities
• but shows its limits when wanting to do
  cross-cultural/country comparison
• less a problem when all/most partners are
  non-native speakers

4
Some reflections from these experiences

• How to build EU-co-operations
  bilateral/regional projects as starting points?
• EU project stand a good chance if build on
  previous collaborative experiences (more
  realistic possibilities of estimating structure
  and work procedures)
• lowers the investment in terms of building
  coherence in a project (holds in particular for
  interdisciplinary work)
• How to create sustainablity?
• What does ERA mean in terms of sustainability of
  established networks of collaboration?
• Stability vs. flexibility

5
Some reflections from these experiences

• What do notions of excellence mean in research
  co-operations?
• notion difficult to grasp in bigger networks
  needs a rethinking of conventional imaginations
  of this notion
• How to present a network beyond the evaluation of
  its partners?
• How many less experienced partner can/should a
  network contain to make it a valuable European
  learning experience?
• How much focus should the evaluation put on the
  projects capacity to make use of the
  possibilities and handle the limitations of work
  crossing conventional disciplinary boundaries?
• Role of experiences in international
  co-operations
• helps to understand and evaluate ones own
  position/capacities/knowledge in a broader
  context