Reconfiguring interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary spaces for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences integration

Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity denote a diversity of practices and present specific challenges to collaboration in research and education. One of those challenges is the integration of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS). The roles these disciplines perform in inter-and transdisciplinary research and education are often mostly limited to instrumental and subordinate ones. Unequal participation of these disciplines causes their exclusion from scientific communities, also affecting career paths of early and senior researchers. I present some results from the project entitled «Shaping interdisciplinary practices in Europe» (SHAPE-ID) that addresses the problem of how to better integrate AHSS disciplines in interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. I conducted a systematic literature review and identified spaces in which integration is performed and roles that AHSS researchers fruitfully develop in an inter-or transdisciplinary setting. I discuss how to facilitate the participation of AHSS researchers by reconfiguring inter-and transdisciplinary spaces and roles. I conclude that AHSS disciplines’ participation in collaborative settings is limited and affects the type of inter-and transdisciplinary knowledge production processes that are driven. This has a direct effect on how senior researchers perceive their academic careers and set the research agenda. But also, on how early career researchers build their academic future.

Published in Revista Educaonline v.15, n. 2 (May/August 2021)