A typology of interdisciplinary collaborations: insights from agri-food transformation research

Abstract

To understand complex societal transformations, scholars have called for more interdisciplinary research in which researchers from various disciplines collaborate. To support the implementation of such collaborations, we introduce a novel typology of interdisciplinary collaborations developed from the literature and from structured reflection on our own research experience. The typology distinguishes (I) common base, (II) common destination, and (III) sequential link type of interdisciplinary collaborations. Common base refers to an interdisciplinary collaboration at one research stage that later separates into parallel disciplinary work; common destination to a collaboration where separate disciplinary work feeds into joint interdisciplinary work at the next stage; and sequential link to a completed stage of disciplinary research that provides the basis for research in another discipline. We illustrate the typology with a case study of interdisciplinary collaborations in a research project that studied the potential for an evidence-based transformation of agricultural pesticide governance. The project involved researchers from seven natural, health, and social science disciplines who developed a process for forming and maintaining interdisciplinary collaborations. We provide five examples of interdisciplinary collaborations from the project, explaining for each its practical design and implementation, its contribution to overall research goals, and related opportunities and challenges. The examples show that the typology can systematize the thinking about interdisciplinary collaborations and enable critical reflection about interdisciplinary research design and implementation. Based on our reflections as early-career researchers, we conclude with lessons that can inform future interdisciplinary research projects on agri-food transformation and beyond.

Keywords: Agriculture; Interdisciplinary research; Methods; Reflection; Research collaborations; Research design; Sustainability transformation.

Fig. 1

Stylized process of interdisciplinary boundary work in the Trapego research project. The figure shows the varying intensity of different procedures of integration over the project duration (blue streams), the broad boundary concepts and objects (gray bubbles; boundary settings not depicted), and the concrete interdisciplinary collaborations that emerged from them (yellow boxes). Source: authors

Fig. 2

Types of interdisciplinary collaborations. Dots represent stages in the research processes. Source: authors