Sustaining And Enjoying A Multidisciplinary, Multidepartment, Multicampus Research Collaboration On Women In Engineering

The development of a successful, long-term, multidisciplinary research collaboration is not something that happens easily or quickly. Since 2001 the authors have collaborated in research projects related to women in engineering, in both the professional workplace and education contexts. What is unusual about this particular research group is the widely varying discipline backgrounds of the members. The group comprises professors in feminist economics, sociology, education and civil engineering. The collaboration has faced numerous challenges in terms of geography, methodology, availability, finding a common language and understanding, differing practice in the various disciplines with respect to writing for publication and what grants count. This paper identifies four inter-related themes that have emerged from our reflections on our experience of gender-based multidisciplinary research.