Interaction With Social and
Economic Sciences (the RELU
Experience)
Dr Justin Greaves
University of Warwick
• ‘We are not students of some subject
matter, but students of problems. And
problems may cut right across the
borders of any subject matter or
discipline’ (Popper, 1963)
RELU 1 at Warwick
• Project on the regulatory and environmental
sustainability of biopesticides
• Essentially a collaboration between political
scientists and plant scientists
• The University of Warwick sought to bring
together natural scientists from Warwick HRI
with social scientists from the main campus to
explore possible common research projects
• The creation of the RELU programme created a
relevant funding opportunity
RELU 3 at Warwick
• Project on the Governance of Livestock
Disease (GoLD)
• One challenge here has been the large and
diverse mix of disciplines involved. There are
four team members from Biological Sciences
(including a veterinary epidemiologist, an
infectious disease epidemiologist, an
ecologist and a mathematical modeller), two
from Political Science, two from Economics
and one from Law
Politics: a junction subject?
• In many ways politics is the junction
subject of the social sciences, born out of
history and philosophy, but drawing of the
insights of economics and sociology and,
to a lesser extent, the study of law,
psychology and geography
• This openness (‘eclecticism’) can be seen
as a strength allowing interdisciplinary
work to flourish
However.....
• A recent ESRC benchmarking review of
political science notes that
‘interdisciplinary networks’ are patchy
• Relatively little co-operation between
natural scientists and political scientists
• Writers such as Moran (2006) and
McKenzie (2007) take a rather pessimistic
view of interdisciplinary collaboration
• Recent symposium issue of European
Political Science on interdisciplinarity
Is Politics a discipline?
• ‘We cannot talk about political science as
a discipline if those who call themselves
political scientists and pretend to teach it
are unable to agree on its basic substance
and methodology’ (EPSNet, 2003)
• ‘It is questionable whether politics is a
discipline in the strictest sense at all’ (Kelly
2009)
• A field of enquiry rather than a discipline?
What is interdisciplinarity?
• ‘I think what we mean .. is people from different
disciplines coming together with the various
research methods, tools, techniques and
processes that they know about. . . and doing two
things: sharing that knowledge between the
disciplines, so there’s a kind of import and export of
knowledge between them, but actually bringing
those things together to create new tools, research
methods, which can be applied to problems that
genuinely sit between or problems that disciplines
have in common or problems where you need a
multi-disciplinary approach to solve them’ (Tom
Innes, Director of Designing for the 21st Century)
Our projects in practice
• Benefit of close geographical proximity
• Importance of email correspondence
(‘electronic brainstorming’)
• Steep learning curve for the political
scientists
• Biologists thought that political scientist
might be identified with a particular political
position, or at least researching the
legitimacy of different political positions
Creating understanding
• In both projects a procedure followed of
each discipline reading literature selected
from the other disciplines and presenting
their understanding of the article to team
meetings
• This allowed misunderstandings to be
resolved and helped create an
understanding of how the other disciplines
worked in terms of methodology and
vocabulary
The importance of interaction
• On the GoLD project we have regular
research team meetings (organised and
run by the post-doctoral researchers)
• Importance of informal interaction
‘It would be ironic, although historically
rather symmetrical, if the genesis of future
great ideas owed more to the
consequences of lunch than to metrics’
Language and terminology
• Often talk of the need for a common language
in interdisciplinary research
• The phrase ‘trading zone’ is often used to
denote an interdisciplinary partnership in which
two or more perspectives are combined and a
new, shared language develops (Collins, Evans
and Gorman, 2007)
• Perhaps the key is a ‘shared understanding’
(Bracken & Oughton, 2006). We aspire to a
GoLD terminology
Co-authorship
• Perhaps the greatest challenge has been
writing together for joint publications
• Biological scientists are used to tersely argued
research papers that present key findings in a
few printed pages, perhaps as few as one
• Political science articles more discursive
• It can be a challenge, therefore, to carve out a
coherent and readable paper.
• How do you standardise the jargon of different
disciplines without losing thread of the content?
‘Change consultant’
• We are working with a change consultant and
business coach, specialising in ‘practical,
measurable methods of improving individual,
team and business performance’
• Given the challenges of an interdisciplinary
project this should promote effective team
working. We hope it will allow team meetings
to be even more productive and improve and
focus our interdisciplinary writing
Please visit our websites
• http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/
biopesticides
• http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fa
c/gld
• Thanks to all members of the RELU 1
and RELU 3 project teams (principal
investigators Wyn Grant and Graham
Medley)