Creating adaptable platforms for interdisciplinary connection
Creating a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and innovative ideas is a key part of Horizons’ work at the University of Leeds, but increasingly it is something we’re being asked to facilitate for other institutions and organisations. Following a recent duo of workshops for Circle U, research managers Poppy Leeder and Kate Kellett share their thoughts on how these collaborative sessions create benefits for all involved.
In Horizons, we try to ‘get out there’ to see how different people and organisations work, build connections and expand our knowledge to draw a thread through these elements and bring learning back into the university. This allows us to share our values and ways of doing things, as well as learning new skills, meeting new people, and building the Horizons Institute community.
It is for these reasons we found ourselves just outside Brussels, at Université Catholique de Louvain, in September and then again in November, to facilitate an interdisciplinary sandpit for the Circle U alliance of research-intensive European universities.
Circle U are keen to build links between its nine member universities to strengthen interdisciplinary working, create new collaborations and provide skills development for researchers. Following a successful sandpit in 2022, they were keen to offer this development opportunity once again. Academic researchers from a range of disciplines across 6 institutions within the Circle U alliance were selected for the programme. They were joined by several external stakeholders from a range of organisations to offer a transdisciplinary perspective on research development.
What is a Horizons Institute interdisciplinary sandpit?
At the Horizons Institute, we have established a reputation for facilitating interdisciplinary research development, particularly through our Crucible Programme, developed by Head of Interdisciplinary Research, Samantha Aspinall. The Circle U sandpit was specifically designed, using tried and tested methods, to support the formation of collaborations across the different institutions, and to explore interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research development.
One of the key aspects of our approach is taking researchers away from their everyday routines, allowing them to explore their own and other participants’ research. This requires a significant time commitment, but we reward this commitment by scheduling activities to discuss ideas, to free minds, and by providing tools to look at things from different perspectives. Most importantly, distractions from day-to-day work are largely removed, and participants are given the luxury to think and explore their ideas without any boundaries.
Our facilitated sessions exploit the opportunities that arise from bringing people together who use different methods, approaches and languages within their research. Our techniques encourage all researchers, whatever their backgrounds, to imagine new and unexpected ways of doing things and, most importantly, meet new people to do them with. The aim of all of this is to move them, as a collective of researchers, into the magical interface between their areas of work, where creativity of thought can develop, and new ideas arise.
So how does it work?
It’s cliched to point out that you get out what you put in, but it’s true in this case.
The more ideas are shared and discussed within the group, the more there is for everyone to discover. This approach relies on researchers taking a leap of faith in a process that is largely unknown to them. We provide a timetable listing a series of activities and interventions, but these are broad descriptions to allow us flexibility to respond to what happens in the moment. We have no way of knowing what may occur when two researchers start to compare notes so cannot, and will not, plan the sessions in great detail. This means attendees never quite know the full extent of what will happen — and neither do we! This is where the experience of Horizons’ facilitators is important so we can adapt to the needs of participants as we work.
The essence of these workshops is that we are exploring new territory at the interface of academic research disciplines, and no-one, least of all us, quite knows what opportunities may be there. The researcher who can embrace that uncertainty, relax into not knowing and feels free to explore, could well end up in a completely unexpected but potentially rich new environment.
Reflections on the Circle U sandpit
At the Circle U sandpit we were able to mix the programme of activities, discussions and talks with informal discussion over meals and free time as well as visits and activities outside the main workspace. This included a visit to the local farm and a microbrewery — yes, the discussion and idea generation even continued while navigating drying onions, missing floorboards in the barn and steins of beer.
During the time spent with the Circle U participants there were several interesting ‘lightbulb’ moments, which we often find occur during our sessions. None more fascinating than the conversation between a biologist and a biblical scholar which yielded useful insights into the commonalities in their approaches, but also resulted in a discussion on how they might inform future approaches based on their understanding of the translation of information from one language to another.
Another significant session was where we asked participants, in groups of threes, to explore the gaps in their knowledge (both personal knowledge and disciplinary knowledge) and ask questions of each other to develop a better understanding. In feeding back to all participants, it was very clear that in one group, all three members took different approaches to objective setting and how they dealt with gaps in knowledge and uncertainty. For some there were clear and obvious gaps in knowledge but in other cases the gaps were less clear, arising from different data availability or methods. As a result of this conversation, one member of the group identified new ways to approach their work, by hearing how the others in the group looked at their own knowledge gaps.
What are the outcomes?
It is important for everyone to understand that these are not instant processes and recognise that the greatest impacts often arise over the longer term.
When developing an interdisciplinary sandpit such as this, we always encourage the provision of some pump-priming funds to be available to participants at the end of the programme. This allows ideas and collaborations to develop and provides an opportunity for the research team to see where their newly developed approach may lead.
There are many instances of impactful interdisciplinary research arising from the Crucible Programme, run by members of our team long before the Horizons Institute was created as a vehicle for this experience and expertise. For example, a new way of analysing insect populations, BioDAR, was developed through bringing together biology and weather prediction radar in a novel way to monitor biodiversity. The team who developed this hugely successful project first met in Leeds on a Crucible, similar to this Circle U sandpit, where their exploration of the interdisciplinary opportunities between them, resulted in this transformative research idea.
More recently, at the Horizons Institute Global Academy, an international programme based on Crucible, three researchers met for the first time who have since developed a project together to better understand and assess the impact of invasive aquatic species in Lake Victoria, looking through the lens of gender equality, nutrition and value chains. You can find out more about this project, and others established through last year’s Global Academy, in our Supporting new approaches to exploring sustainable and secure food systems blog post.
While it could be argued that such projects can develop without the intervention of the programmes that the Horizons Institute delivers, we know that our approach catalyses interdisciplinary research development and brings researchers together, who might never have met, in an environment where they can exchange and develop ideas, find novel ways of working, and identify new approaches to challenge-led research to begin to develop the solutions of the future.
If you’d like to explore this way of working to unleash new insights into your research challenges, get in touch via horizons@leeds.ac.uk
