Integrating Insights: Interdisciplinary Research Project

Course goals

After this course, the student will:

1. be able to formulate an interdisciplinary research question and justify an interdisciplinary PPE approach.
2. be able to systematically assess the differences and similarities between disciplinary perspectives.
3. be able to systematically integrate different disciplinary perspectives into a more comprehensive understanding of a complex societal problem.
4. be able to reflect on the challenges and benefits of interdisciplinary research.

Content

Political and economic institutions face novel challenges in a rapidly changing world, such as globalisation, robotisation and climate change. A disciplinary perspective cannot do justice to the complexity of these societal issues. For instance, a more comprehensive understanding of the rise of populism requires knowledge about the failure of representative democracy (political science), economic crises (economics), the ideology of populism (philosophy) and earlier incarnations of this phenomenon (history). However, the insights from these disciplines often rely on different assumptions, theories, and methods. If economics assumes individuals act as rational consumers while political scientists assume irrational voting behaviour, how can you combine their insights into a coherent perspective?

This course equips students with a toolkit to integrate insights from different disciplines. Students train in the logic of interdisciplinary research and integrative techniques. They are challenged to write an article-length academic paper based on literature research in a systematic and reflective manner. Students are free to select a research topic within their thematic track. Throughout this process, students are supported by individual supervision and their writing support group.

This course's structure follows the three phases of an interdisciplinary research process: research design, disciplinary findings, and integration. In the first weeks (1-2), the course focuses on formulating an interdisciplinary research question and justifying an interdisciplinary approach. The course then introduces tools for managing research findings to facilitate finding common ground and provides time to conduct research (weeks 3-4). Building on this research, the third part of the course (week 5-7) focuses on systematic integration of disciplinary insights into an interdisciplinary perspective on a contemporary societal issue. 

Additional information

Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final and may still be modified until the 3rd Wednesday in September.