Investigating Interdisciplinary Practice: Methodological Challenges (Introduction)

Interdisciplinarity (ID) is one of the most prominent ideas driving science and research policy today. It is applied widely as a conception of what particularly creative and socially relevant research processes should consist of, whether in the natural sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, or elsewhere. Its advocates, many of whom are located in current science and research administration themselves, are using ideas of interdisciplinarity to reshape university organization and research funding. For the last 40 years, researchers studying interdisciplinarity have built up a substantial body of literature constructing various visions of what it should be and how to taxonomize the different forms it can take, putting a distinct emphasis on a theoretical approach to conceptualizing and understanding interdisciplinarity. However, the need for empirically substantiated knowledge has only