Interdisciplinary Thinking

What does it take to successfully combine knowledge from different fields?

Interdisciplinary collaborations are in high demand today. Both in academia and industry, knowledge is increasingly generated jointly by experts with diverse backgrounds. Although such cooperations offer great potential for innovation, they also, at the same time, can pose significant challenges to researchers: unfamiliarity with other disciplines can make it hard to find cross-disciplinary connections in the first place and differences in disciplinary perspectives can impede a productive exchange of ideas even if there are shared interests.

This seminar serves as a primer to interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration. We explore the reasons and typical starting points for working together across disciplinary boundaries, we examine frequent obstacles to joint problem-solving and introduce tactics that can adress these challenges (such as tools for collaborative ideation, accessible communication and knowledge integration). As a consequence, you will be better equipped to both explore and exploit the creative potential of epistemically diverse teams.

This workshop is in collaboration with the KIT Graduate School Cyber Security.

Trainer: Stefan Götze (KIT/KHYS) holds a DPhil in the Social Sciences (Oxford) and did research in interdisciplinary groups at Mannheim and Munich (LMU). Since 2019, he consults and trains scientists and scientific groups at KIT on matters of interdisciplinary collaboration and scientific creativity. His related concepts and measures have been integrated into the working programs of a number of Collaborative Research Centres and Research Training Groups at KIT. His related recommendations have been published in peer-reviewed journals.

Registration: Please email Carolin Ibelshäuser by Monday, 21 October 2024. Once you receive a confirmation with the link to the virtual workshop room, your registration is binding.