Interdisciplinary research and development projects are becoming increasingly more common within academia when having to address complex tasks. For example, this is especially prominent within the field of health sciences:

“An example is the long-term side effects of cancer treatment. A lot of people who have undergone cancer treatment end up as patients again, albeit within a different part of the healthcare system. They may develop anxiety, digestive issues, sensory disturbances and taste disorders, or other highly complex conditions. Therefore, these late effects typically cannot be addressed by a single discipline alone. It is a challenge that extends deep into and across traditional disciplinary boundaries,” explains Mette Krogh Christensen.

Mette Krogh Christensen is an associate professor at the CED. She teaches and supervises professional educators, primarily in the fields of health science education and university teaching. She has developed the online course Supervision Across Disciplines: Collective Academic Supervision, designed to support the implementation of collective academic supervision in groups of students from different fields of study.

“Different disciplines come together because a given topic requires multiple perspectives. When the collaboration works well, these perspectives complement one another and lead to solutions that none of them could have arrived at alone,” she elaborates.

The supervisor’s challenges in interdisciplinary contexts

Supervising interdisciplinary projects places specific demands on the supervisor. First of all, interdisciplinary supervision requires the supervisor to step outside their scientific comfort zone and actively engage with other academic disciplines. This often means that the supervisor finds themselves working at – or even beyond – the boundaries of their expertise, which can feel like a vulnerable position, as they may not always have the definitive expert answer to emerging questions.

“For example, when supervising students in interdisciplinary groups, the supervisor must be willing to move beyond their area of expertise and their disciplinary comfort zone and demonstrate to the group that this is acceptable. Supervisors need to act as role models for students and support their ability to explore interdisciplinary possibilities in future projects,” says Mette Krogh Christensen.

Secondly, the supervisor must be able to reflect with the group on the fundamental conditions for interdisciplinarity. This includes an understanding of whether individual disciplines have a strong or weak external framing – or classification – compared to other disciplines, and how this influences collaboration across fields. Therefore, a key aspect of the supervisor’s role is to facilitate discussions about the interdisciplinary space, where traditional disciplinary boundaries are challenged, and innovative approaches and perspectives can be explored. 

“Strongly defined disciplines have their own research traditions and a clear consensus on what constitutes the gold standard within their field. Weakly defined disciplines have more fluid boundaries and draw on research traditions from multiple related fields. Strongly defined disciplines can at times be more challenging to collaborate with, while weakly defined disciplines often depend on other fields to strengthen their knowledge base,” she explains.

Finally, the supervisor must be able to create transparency in the process in order to support the group as effectively as possible. This can be achieved by asking exploratory and challenging questions that uncover the underlying assumptions behind the students’ use of their individual disciplines. In doing so, the supervisor contributes to critical reflection on how different scientific methods and understandings can be combined in an interdisciplinary project.

“In short, supervisors must recognise the distinct boundaries and conceptual frameworks of different disciplines, while also remaining firmly rooted in their own disciplinary expertise,” she explains.

It is about speaking the same language

Mette Krogh Christensen emphasises that collaborating in interdisciplinary groups requires a great deal of communication, as participants try to engage with one another’s perspectives:

“It is about being curious about other disciplines and developing an integrated understanding of a topic, where perspectives take each other into account rather than simply shouting at each other from opposite corners,” she explains, and continues:

“For example, a poor version of interdisciplinarity would be a book in which each chapter is written from a different perspective. In the end, the reader is left with a collection of different viewpoints – but then what? What recommendations can be made based on these perspectives? The recommendations may point in quite different directions or even contradict one another. If interdisciplinary collaboration is to provide real value, the different disciplines must speak the same language – or at the very least understand one another,” Mette Krogh Christensen concludes.

Moving from specialist to generalist

For supervisors working with interdisciplinary groups or supervising within a broad field, they must be able to navigate between different disciplines. This requires the ability to engage with each individual discipline while simultaneously viewing it through the lens of their own academic background.

In this process, it is necessary to embrace the role of a generalist and be able to identify connections across perspectives, ask exploratory and challenging questions, and bridge different academic approaches. This type of supervision requires the ability to engage with new perspectives while maintaining a sense of the bigger picture that fosters interdisciplinary dialogue.

“Within a strongly defined discipline, you are not free to do just anything – otherwise, it would no longer be recognised as that particular discipline. For example, a university educational centre like the CED cannot suddenly start conducting research in physics. However, we can conduct research into physics education together with physicists. In doing so, we approach the topic from our disciplinary perspective – university education – in collaboration with physicists. To do that, you must be willing to adopt a generalist position. That is, to engage with other disciplines without necessarily achieving the same level of expertise, but enough to identify meaningful connections,” explains Mette Krogh Christensen.

At the same time, she emphasises that you have to accept that others may hold different perceptions of a field and its academic approaches, which can challenge the solutions you might initially propose.

Develop your interdisciplinary supervision skills

If you want to strengthen your skills as a supervisor of interdisciplinary groups, you can explore the resource Supervision Across Disciplines: Collective Academic Supervision. This self-paced online course provides you with essential tools for working with collective academic supervision in interdisciplinary contexts.

Through four short modules, you will learn to identify the core elements of collective academic supervision, facilitate feedback processes, and navigate interdisciplinary groups of students or early career researchers. The modules consist of short videos and learning activities.

The course offers you the opportunity to develop the generalist mindset that is essential for successful interdisciplinary supervision.