Call for short reflective contributions on the theme “Interdisciplinarity as a research policy mascot”

Proposed contributions can, for example, address any of the following questions:

• How is interdisciplinary research characterised in research policy contexts? What challenges and opportunities are emphasised and what is left unsaid?
• What role for research in policy-making is implied when interdisciplinarity is emphasised as a key pathway to successfully address difficult societal issues?
• Has interdisciplinarity been given different meanings in research policy over the decades?
• Is interdisciplinarity ideological, and if so, in what way? Which political ideologies support or oppose interdisciplinarity?
• What other types of multi- and interdisciplinary research are rendered invisible when research policy contexts emphasise the importance of challenge-driven interdisciplinarity to address so-called “wicked problems”?
• Is interdisciplinarity within research policy contexts equated with a certain type of relevance-oriented applied research?
• What scientific status hierarchies between disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches are performed in research policy texts? Are we dealing with a disciplinary status hierarchy that operates with concepts such as excellence and another, interdisciplinary status order, that revolves around being useful to address complex problems?
• Are hopes that interdisciplinarity will solve difficult social problems realistic? Can interdisciplinarity really resolve inherent value conflicts?
• Are the many challenges of interdisciplinarity itself invisible in research policy discussions? If so, what does it mean that it is presented as a solution, when the challenges of actually being able to function are invisible?
• Can some areas be “loved to death” by short-term research policy trends? What happens to the necessary long-term structures within different areas if the fluctuations in research policy trends become too great?

We naturally welcome contributions that address other questions. However, each contribution needs to relate in some way to the overarching premise and theme that interdisciplinarity has a particular expression in the context of research policy making.