| Max-Weber-Kolleg, Religion, Society, and World Relations, Research

Practicing Interdisciplinarity: A Bottom-Up Approach

Rafael Antonio Barroso Romero, Elisabeth Begemann, Enno Friedrich, Elena Malagoli, Anna-Katharina Rieger, Jörg Rüpke, Ramón Soneira Martínez and Markus Vinzent (eds.)

Rafael Antonio Barroso Romero, Elisabeth Begemann, Enno Friedrich, Elena Malagoli, Anna-Katharina Rieger, Jörg Rüpke, Ramón Soneira Martínez and Markus Vinzent (eds.)
Practicing Interdisciplinarity: A Bottom-Up Approach
Berlin: De Gruyter 2024
ISBN 978-3-11-133983-2
217 pages
86.95 EUR

In interdisciplinary projects and research networks, members are confronted with a variety of challenges. They are expected to advance scientific programmes as well as produce publications, create visibility for researchers and research, bring (international) experts into dialogue with the project participants and thus generate innovative impulses and new approaches while at the same time expanding the scope for topics of their own choice.

From the very beginning, the International Graduate School "Resonant World Relations in Ancient and Modern Socio-Religious Practices", a project of the Max-Weber-Kolleg of the University of Erfurt and the Karl-Franzens-University Graz, met these challenges and brought together researchers and their projects from different disciplines, with different methods and epochs under consideration. In order to share the experiences and challenges of interdisciplinary research, the participating researchers are now presenting results and reflections on the way interdisciplinarity is practised and how it drives innovative research questions in this milestone publication with new formats.

Looking beyond one's own discipline is not only common practice in the humanities and social sciences research landscape, it is downright necessary in order to achieve meaningful and relevant results. This applies not only to established researchers, but also to early-stage researchers. What can meaningful interdisciplinary work look like in such an academic environment? What tasks and constraints, requirements and needs are researchers confronted with? How can interdisciplinary research projects be organised in a meaningful way? How can different disciplines, their methods and theories be brought into dialogue with each other across the spatial and temporal distance of their subject matter during the entire duration and successive funding phases? In joint contributions, the speakers will approach the question from different perspectives and in different formats, as a discussion, classic research paper or process sketch, always with the practical question of how interdisciplinarity can be practised.

Invitation to the book presentation

On Monday, 3 February 2025, the research group will present its new publication in an online event and discuss it with guests. The event starts at 2 pm. Interested parties can join the WebEx event at uni-erfurt.webex.com/meet/elisabeth.begemann.