literary research and interdisciplinarity

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• Interdisciplinary Literary Studies

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The hallmark of research today is “interdisciplinary,” and Interdisciplinary Literary Studies exemplifies the diversity, complexity, and rewards of integrating literary study with other methodologies. Drawing upon a broad base of critical theories and applying these to a wide range of literary genres, contributors reward us with daring interpretations, such as a mathematical reading of triangles in Robert Frost’s poetry or an “engaged Buddhist response to trauma” reading of Le Ly Hayslip’s Child of War, Woman of Peace . Editor Kenneth Womack, an author of both nonfiction and fiction (including John Doe No. 2 and the Dreamland Motel [Switchgrass, 2010]) has placed Interdisciplinary Literary Studies squarely in the middle of the conversation.

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• Editorial Board -- Volume 20, Number 2, 2018
• Editorial Board -- Volume 20, Number 1, 2018
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• Editorial Board -- Volume 19, Number 3, 2017
• Editorial Board -- Volume 19, Number 2, 2017
• Editorial Board -- Volume 19, Number 1, 2017
• Editorial Board -- Volume 18, Number 4, 2016
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• Editorial Board -- Volume 18, Number 2, 2016
• Editorial Board -- Volume 18, Number 1, 2016
• Editorial Board -- Volume 17, Number 4, 2015
• Editorial Board -- Volume 17, Number 3, 2015
• Editorial Board -- Volume 17, Number 2, 2015
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• Editorial Board -- Volume 15, Number 2, 2013
• Editorial Board -- Volume 15, Number 1, 2013
• Editorial Board -- Volume 14, Number 2, 2012
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Interdisciplinary Literary Studies

A Journal of Criticism and Theory

James M. Decker, Editor Kenneth Womack, Editor

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Access current issues through Scholarly Publishing Collective , Project MUSE , or back content on JSTOR . Interdisciplinary Literary Studies seeks to explore the interconnections between literary study and other disciplines, ideologies, and cultural methods of critique. All national literatures, periods, and genres are welcomed topics.

Editors James M. Decker, Illinois Central College, US Kenneth Womack, Mommouth University, US

Associate Editors Todd F. Davis, Penn State Altoona Laura E. Rotunno, Penn State Altoona Megan Simpson, Penn State Altoona

Editorial Board William Baker, Northern Illinois University, US David Bartine, SUNY Binghamton Kirstie Blair, University of Stirling John Brannigan, University College, Dublin Olga Cooke, Texas A&M University John Dern, Temple University Nancy Easterlin, University of New Orleans Ranjan Ghosh, North Bengal University David Gorman, Northern Illinois University John Kimsey, DePaul University Peter Kitson, University of Dundee Amy Mallory-Kani, SUNY Albany Ian Marshall, The Pennsylvania State University Altoona William Nelles, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, US Anna Peak, Temple University Mohammad A. Quayum, International Islamic University Malaysia David Rampton, University of Ottawa Ruth Robbins, Leeds Beckett University Elaine Treharne, Stanford University Julian Wolfreys, University of Portsmouth

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The Handbook to Literary Research

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The Handbook to Literary Research is a practical guide for students embarking on postgraduate work in Literary Studies. It introduces and explains research techniques, methodologies and approaches to information resources, paying careful attention to the differences between countries and institutions, and providing a range of key examples.

This fully updated second edition is divided into five sections which cover:

• tools of the trade – a brand new chapter outlining how to make the most of literary resources
• textual scholarship and book history – explains key concepts and variations in editing, publishing and bibliography
• issues and approaches in literary research – presents a critical overview of theoretical approaches essential to literary studies
• the dissertation – demonstrates how to approach, plan and write this important research exercise
• glossary – provides comprehensive explanations of key terms, and a checklist of resources.

Packed with useful tips and exercises and written by scholars with extensive experience as teachers and researchers in the field, this volume is the ideal Handbook for those beginning postgraduate research in literature.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 | 6  pages, introduction to the handbook delia da sousa correa and w.r. owens, part | 2  pages, part 1 tools of the trade, chapter 2 | 28  pages, tools and techniques for literary research: using online and printed sources, part 2 textual scholarship and book history, chapter 3 | 10  pages, bibliography simon eliot, chapter 4 | 20  pages, history of the book simon eliot, chapter 5 | 18  pages, editing literary texts w.r. owens, part 3 issues and approaches in literary research, chapter 6 | 20  pages, institutional histories of literary disciplines, chapter 7 | 22  pages, the place of theory in literary disciplines, chapter 8 | 17  pages, literary research and interdisciplinarity david johnson, chapter 9 | 19  pages, literary research and other media delia da sousa correa, with contributions, chapter 10 | 18  pages, literary research and translation susan bassnett, part 4 planning and completing a research project, chapter 11 | 18  pages, planning, writing and presenting a dissertation or thesis w.r. owens, part 5 reference, chapter 12 | 17  pages, glossary w.r. owens, chapter 13 | 26  pages, checklist of libraries, print, online and other research resources.

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2nd Edition

The Handbook to Literary Research

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Description

The Handbook to Literary Research is a practical guide for students embarking on postgraduate work in Literary Studies. It introduces and explains research techniques, methodologies and approaches to information resources, paying careful attention to the differences between countries and institutions, and providing a range of key examples. This fully updated second edition is divided into five sections which cover: tools of the trade – a brand new chapter outlining how to make the most of literary resources textual scholarship and book history – explains key concepts and variations in editing, publishing and bibliography issues and approaches in literary research – presents a critical overview of theoretical approaches essential to literary studies the dissertation – demonstrates how to approach, plan and write this important research exercise glossary – provides comprehensive explanations of key terms, and a checklist of resources. Packed with useful tips and exercises and written by scholars with extensive experience as teachers and researchers in the field, this volume is the ideal Handbook for those beginning postgraduate research in literature.

Table of Contents

Delia da Sousa Correa, W. R. Owens

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Article contents

Interdisciplinarity: its meaning and consequences.

• Raymond C. Miller Raymond C. Miller Department of International Relations, San Francisco State University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.92
• Published in print: 01 March 2010
• Published online: 20 November 2017
• This version: 27 August 2020
• Previous version

Interdisciplinarity is an analytically reflective study of the methodological, theoretical, and institutional implications of implementing interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research. Interdisciplinary approaches in the social sciences began in the 1920s. At a minimum, they involve the application of insights and perspectives from more than one conventional discipline to the understanding of social phenomena. The formal concept of interdisciplinarity entered the literature in the early 1970s. The scholars responsible all shared the thought that the scientific enterprise had become less effective due to disciplinary fragmentation and that a countermovement for the unification of knowledge was the proper response. However, not all interdisciplinarians believe that the unification of existing knowledge is the answer.

There are many ways of differentiating between types of interdisciplinary approaches. One classification distinguishes between multidisciplinary, crossdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches. Multidisciplinary approaches involve the simple act of juxtaposing parts of several conventional disciplines in an effort to get a broader understanding of some common theme or problem. Crossdisciplinary approaches involve real interaction across the conventional disciplines, though the extent of communication; thus, combination, synthesis, or integration of concepts and/or methods vary considerably. Transdisciplinary approaches, meanwhile, involve articulated conceptual frameworks that seek to transcend the more limited world views of the specialized conventional disciplines. Even though many believe that interdisciplinary efforts can create innovative knowledge, the power structure of the disciplinary academy resists interdisciplinary inroads on its authority and resources.

• academic discipline
• area studies
• interdisciplinary approaches
• interdisciplinarity
• interdiscipline
• multidisciplinary
• cross-disciplinary
• transdisciplinary

Updated in this version

Updated references; major revisions throughout.

Introduction

As early as the 1920s, the US Social Science Research Council (SSRC) recognized that, in only several decades after its invention, the departmental/disciplinary structure of the university was becoming an obstacle to effectively addressing comprehensive social problems. Especially in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the Rockefeller Foundation and then the Ford Foundation worked with the SSRC to fund interdisciplinary research and teaching in US higher education. In the early Cold War era, area studies programs were major recipients of that funding. As a consequence, international studies during this period were often conceptualized as interdisciplinary (Calhoun, 2017 ). At the founding of the International Studies Association (ISA) in 1959 , its mission statement explicitly states that the ISA “promotes interdisciplinary approaches to problems that cannot fruitfully be examined from the confines of a single discipline” ( International Studies Perspectives , May, 2007 , back cover).

The first section of this essay is a historical survey of selected professional literature on interdisciplinary studies, beginning with the classic 1972 OECD Report on its Paris conference (Apostel, 1972 ). It was the first major book entitled Interdisciplinarity . To achieve some conceptual clarity on the many varieties of interdisciplinary activity in the academy, basic terms were defined and a typology proposed. The second major part of this essay is structured by that typology of multidisciplinary, crossdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches. Since all of these categories rely on disciplines as the core ingredient, discipline is also defined.

In recent years, the concept interdisciplinarity has become popular among scholars. Many books and articles have it in their titles. Books on interdisciplinary approaches vary from those promoting interdisciplinarity (Farrell, Lusatia, & Vanden Hove, 2013 ) to those denigrating it and praising the superior qualities of the disciplines (Jacobs, 2014 ). Furthermore, the widespread discussion of interdisciplinarity does not mean that it has politically succeeded in the academy. By and large the conventional disciplines have maintained their power over the university and funding bureaucracies. The last section of this essay discusses the varying fortunes of interdisciplinary approaches in the academy, especially in reference to international relations.

Historical Survey of Select Literature

The noun interdisciplinarity made its professional debut in a 1972 publication from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The report, entitled Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities (Apostel, 1972 ), was sponsored by OECD’s Parisian-based Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. The Report had chapters written by scholars from six different European countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Though there were many differences between them, they all shared the thought that the scientific enterprise had become less effective due to disciplinary fragmentation, and that a counter movement for the unification of knowledge was the proper response. The problem was “how to unify knowledge and what the many implications of such unity are for teaching and research in the universities …” (Apostel, 1972 , p. 11). Unification “means the integration of concepts and methods in these disciplines” (pp. 11–12). A number of unifying schemas were proposed, including mathematics, linguistic structuralism, Marxism and general systems. Although the authors had different “transdisciplinary” proposals, they all agreed that “interdisciplinarity is a way of life. It is basically a mental outlook which combines curiosity with open mindedness and a spirit of adventure and discovery. . . .” It is practiced collectively. . . . It teaches that there can be no discontinuity between education and research” (Apostel, p. 285).

In addition to a number of important theoretical articles, the OECD report had a major emphasis on the design and implementation of interdisciplinary universities. The authors of that section, Asa Briggs of Sussex University and Guy Michaud of the University of Paris, gave as their sample model an interdisciplinary university with a special emphasis on international relations. They believed that because the field of international relations had the most complex connections, it necessarily involved the study of many methods, disciplines, issues, languages, and geographical areas. All students of their proposed university were expected to be familiar with the basic approaches and concepts of anthropology, politics, economics, international law, ecology, geography, history, sociology, and ethno-psychology (Apostel, 1972 , pp. 253–257).

Chronologically, the next major book that addressed the general issue of interdisciplinarity in the university setting was entitled Interdisciplinarity and Higher Education . It was published in 1979 , and its editor was Joseph Kockelmans, the Director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program at Pennsylvania State University. Possibly because he was European-educated, his orientation was similar to the authors of the OECD Report. He argued that only through “philosophical reflection” can the society’s intellectuals approach the “totality of meaning.” To overcome the fragmented worlds that they have created, they need to reach agreement not only on the position of the sciences, but also on “religion, morality, the arts and our sociopolitical praxis” (Kockelmans, 1979 , pp. 153–158). However, Kockelmans was opposed to using a pre-existing framework, such as the ones listed above in the OECD Report, or the logical positivism of the Unification of Science movement spearheaded by the Vienna Circle in the 1930s. None of them fulfilled the comprehensive vision that Kockelmans advocated.

In October of 1984 , OECD, in collaboration with the Swedish National Board of Universities and Colleges, decided to hold a conference to revisit the concept and experience of interdisciplinarity. More than half of the participants were from Sweden, and almost half of them were from one university, Linköping. Linköping University was especially interested in the topic because it had instituted a doctoral program based on four interdisciplinary themes (technology and social change, water in environment and society, health and society, and communication). The proceedings of the conference were published under the title Interdisciplinarity Revisited: Re-Assessing the Concept in the Light of Institutional Experience (Levin & Lind, 1985 ). Essentially the conferees agreed that the early enthusiasm for an interdisciplinary revolution was dampened by the realities of societal and institutional politics. Interdisciplinary research and teaching were still happening, but they were easier to accomplish if the participants did not boldly label them as such. The advisability of keeping a low profile was due to the fact that the “magical slot” from the mid 1960s to the early 1970s, in which interdisciplinary innovation had flourished, was replaced by a more conservative period in which disciplines reasserted their authority. George Papadopoulos of the OECD concluded that, “interdisciplinarity, even when it succeeds in unscrambling existing curricula, remains a hostage to the disciplines” (Levin & Lind, 1985 , p. 208).

The first major work on interdisciplinarity by an American-educated scholar was published in 1990 by Julie Thompson Klein, professor of humanities at Wayne State University. Her book is entitled Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory and Practice . Rather than making an argument for a particular approach, Klein provided a compilation of all the existing literature across all fields of knowledge. She concluded her extensive survey by observing:

Interdisciplinarity has been variously defined in this century: as a methodology, a concept, a process, a way of thinking, a philosophy, and a reflexive ideology. It has been linked with attempts to expose the dangers of fragmentation, to reestablish old connections, to explore emerging relationships, and to create new subjects adequate to handle our practical and conceptual needs. Cutting across all these theories is one recurring idea. Interdisciplinarity is a means of solving problems and answering questions that cannot be satisfactorily addressed using single methods or approaches. Whether the context is a short-range instrumentality or a long-range reconceptualization of epistemology, the concept represents an important attempt to define and establish common ground. (Klein, 1990 , p. 196)

Nowhere in Julie Klein’s extensive bibliography (97 pages long) is there mention of the term international relations or international studies , although she does have a section on area studies.

In 1997 , the Academia Europaea and the European Commission organized a conference in Cambridge, England around the topic “Interdisciplinarity and the Organisation of Knowledge in Europe.” The conference proceedings were published in 1999 under the same title (Cunningham, ed.). There were 24 contributors from 11 countries with most (9) coming from the United Kingdom. Several contributors referred back to the seminal article by Erich Jantsch in the 1972 OECD pioneering publication. Collectively they agreed that modern disciplines were a product of the scientific revolution of the 19th century . The specialized research entities of the University of Berlin seem to have been the origin of the disciplinary structure of knowledge. “Focusing scholarly attention on the essence or nucleus of the individual subject led inevitably to the putting-up of barriers” (Rüegg, 1999 , pp. 34–35). The division into insular, specialized disciplines was seen by sociologists as an almost inevitable outcome of the differentiation associated with the process of industrialization. John Ziman argued that the impetus toward greater and greater specialization had to do with the scholarly requirement for originality. It’s easier to be a “big frog in a small pond” (Ziman, 1999 , pp. 74–75). He concluded his essay by contending that “disciplines stand for stability and uniformity,” whereas “interdisciplinarity is a code word for diversity and adaptability” (pp. 81–82).

In the United States, some of the young scholars in international relations observed the disciplinary narrowing of the field and decided to publish a book in 2000 entitled Beyond Boundaries: Disciplines, Paradigms, and Theoretical Integration in International Studies (Sil & Doherty, 2000 ). A review (Miller, 2001 ) appearing in the newsletter of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies observed that the book does not deliver on its promise to meaningfully discuss disciplines, paradigms, and theoretical integration; however, it does juxtapose different theoretical positions while calling for international relations scholars to be tolerant and willing to cross boundaries between disciplines and schools of thought.

In 2002 , an English academic, Joe Moran, published a book that he simply entitled Interdisciplinarity . Though broad in comprehension, it focuses on English and cultural studies. He argued that the institutional implications of openly pursuing interdisciplinary approaches are inevitably political, both in the hierarchy of knowledge and in the allocation of material resources (Moran, 2002 ). Oxford University Press decided to enter this academic realm by publishing the Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (Froderman, Klein, & Mitcham, 2010 ). None of the 37 chapters are primarily on international studies, though one of the chapters uses area studies as an example (Calhoun & Rhoten, 2010 ). In 2017 , the Handbook came out in a second edition (Froderman). Its 46 chapters address many issues, ranging from funding to pedagogy. However, there is still no chapter dedicated to international studies. The philosopher and editor Robert Froderman argued that “interdisciplinarity is the bridge between academic sophists (disciplinarians) and the rest of society” (p. 7).

In 2009 , Pami Aalto of Tampere University in Finland embarked on a major project to discuss and showcase interdisciplinary approaches in international studies. Two books emerged from the project. The first was International Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Aalto, Harle & Moisio, 2011 ), and the second, Global and Regional Problems: Towards an Interdisciplinary Study (Aalto, Harle, & Moisio, 2012 ). Aalto and his fellow editors argue, “We want to assert that International Studies—as a wider field of studies than International Relations—must necessarily be more interdisciplinary than International Relations ever was during its golden era from the 1950s onwards” (Aalto et al., 2011 , p. 3). They observed that, in the inter-war period, international studies was an interdisciplinary field with materials and perspectives drawn from many fields and disciplines. They noted that this sense of the field was spelled out in the 1939 League of Nations publication University Teaching of International Relations (Zimmern) as well as Quincy Wright’s magnum opus The Study of International Relations ( 1955 ). Despite Wright’s extraordinary effort to synthesize over 20 fields into the study of international relations, his influence over the subsequent development of the field has been minimal. International relations, especially in the United States from the 1950s on, has become more and more embedded in political science. A key reason for this evolution was the focus on the cold war power conflict. Ironically, a major intellectual force in this development was Quincy Wright’s colleague at the University of Chicago, Hans Morgenthau. However, with the end of the Cold War era, Aalto and his fellow editors were hoping for the emergence of a broader, more diverse, interdisciplinary approach to international studies (Aalto et al., 2011 , pp. 11–19).

In 2013 , two European-based scholars, Andrew Barry and Georgina Born, published a book in which they claimed to rethink what is meant by interdisciplinarity, entitled Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences . For instance, the authors challenge the conventional statement that interdisciplinary activity is about combining and integrating knowledge from existing disciplines. They believe that interdisciplinarity is about gathering knowledge from all available sources, not just disciplines. They point to community-based knowledge, local experience, and indigenous knowledge, among other sources. Also, they start with the premise that neither disciplinary nor interdisciplinary activities are monolithic or unchanging. Disciplines do have the political advantage in the academy because they usually control the curriculum and the budgets that include faculty hiring. Thus, the disciplines have considerable control over the conditions that determine the degree of receptivity to interdisciplinary research and teaching in any particular university setting. In Barry and Born’s opinion, truly interdisciplinary activities have qualities that differentiate them positively from the disciplines. These three qualities are accountability, innovation, and ontology. Accountability means being more responsive to societal needs. Innovation means being more practical about the problems that are addressed. And ontology means that interdisciplinary activities are more likely to be relational, holistic, and to view humans as being embedded in nature. Also, they respect the participation of the public in the discovery and application of knowledge. But interdisciplinary programs come and go. Some have staying power and become established interdisciplines, even new disciplines. Some get absorbed, whereas others disappear altogether. “The chapters in this book attest to the heterogeneity that characterises both disciplines and interdisciplines and the necessity of probing the genealogies of particular interdisciplinary problematics” (Barry & Born, 2013 , p. 41).

The American Political Science Association noted the increasing popularity of interdisciplinary rhetoric and practice, and in 2007 , they established a Task Force to study it. The report of the Task Force was published under the title Interdisciplinarity: Its Role in a Discipline-Based Academy (Aldrich, 2014 ). The report is interesting because of the obvious tension that permeates the document between proponents of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity. The first chapter reiterates the value of disciplines. The Task Force Chair, John Aldrich, argued that disciplines are the foundation of knowledge and the academy. In his view, interdisciplinary efforts often lack valid and reliable measures for judging scholarship and teaching, and thus are inherently inferior. Nevertheless, in a subsequent chapter, four pioneers of interdisciplinary scholarship argued for the superior merits of interdisciplinary approaches. The four are David Easton (systems), R. Duncan Luce (cognitive science), and Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph (area studies). In fact, Easton stated, “I don’t see anything that can possibly be exciting and not be interdisciplinary. I think the disciplines have sort of exhausted their contributions to our understanding of politics” (Aldrich, 2014 , p. 55). Lloyd Rudolph concluded his interview by offering this reflection: “I realize that it is not only that I value interdisciplinarity but also that I value being allowed to think out of the box of disciplinary methods. New concepts reveal new realities” (Aldrich, 2014 , p. 72).

In 2013 and 2015 , two books were published that had both “interdisciplinary” and “international relations” in their titles. The first was Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and International Relations: The State of the Art , edited by Jeffrey Dunoff and Mark Pollack ( 2013 ). A more accurate title would have been “interdisciplinary perspectives on the historical relationship between international law and international relations.” The authors noted that during the inter-war period, scholars in the two fields worked very closely together. However, with the advent of World War II and the rise of realism as the dominant theory in international relations, the study of law was considered irrelevant, as unenforceable international law does not affect the behavior of nation-states. Furthermore, normative law was considered too non-scientific for the post-World War II behavioralists/positivists political scientists. It’s worth noting that the editors consider international relations a discipline and that they seem to use it interchangeably with political science. With the rise of other theories in international relations that challenged the dominance of realism, international law became a more acceptable ingredient of international relations scholarship in the 1990s and thereafter. However, instead of a more equal relationship between two disciplines, international law was often considered a subject rather than a discipline. Or as the editors put it, “the intellectual terms of trade were asymmetrical” (Dunoff & Pollack, 2013 , p. 649). The interdisciplinary perspective of the editors and their fellow authors is reflected in their call for more pragmatic, eclectic theoretical approaches drawn from both international relations and international law. “Our call therefore is not for token inclusion of international law approaches, but rather for an interdisciplinary version of the pragmatic, analytically eclectic, tool-kit approach” (p. 653).

The second book, edited by Patrick James and Steve Yetiv, was Advancing Interdisciplinary Approaches to International Relations (Yetiv & James, 2015 ). Their advancement illustration is the application of many perspectives from different disciplines and interdisciplines to the topic of conflict studies. These include history, political science, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, gender studies, technology studies, demography, and systems analysis (p. 324).

In 2016 , the British Academy published a report on its investigation of interdisciplinary research and teaching in higher education in the United Kingdom. It is entitled Crossing Paths: Interdisciplinary Institutions, Careers, Education and Applications . The working group was chaired by David Soskice of the London School of Economics. In his preface, he recognized the need to promote interdisciplinarity. According to him, this was necessary because the universities, the research councils, the journals and publishers were organized along disciplinary lines. “The incentive structures set up by the interplay of these institutions militates against interdisciplinarity” (p. 5). Then, paradoxically, Soskice went on to argue, as did the group report, that the best way to promote interdisciplinarity is the support of “strong disciplines” (Soskice, 2016 , p. 6). This seems like a strategy that would perpetuate the problem they have identified. The group recommended that junior faculty should first make their reputations in a home discipline. Only then would it be safe to venture into interdisciplinary territory (p. 9). However, once socialized in the discipline’s world view, it’s less likely that faculty will venture into interdisciplinary territory.

The British Academy report recognizes that getting a credible and fair evaluation of interdisciplinary research is very difficult in a discipline-controlled environment. Nevertheless, the working group recommended “evaluating the whole and not just disciplinary parts of any interdisciplinary output. The quality of interdisciplinary work lies in the way that it brings disciplines together” (Soskice, 2016 , p. 10). The evaluation chapter provides a set of guidance questions for research-review panels for evaluating interdisciplinary research proposals. One of the questions asks whether the proposal shows “an understanding of the challenges of interdisciplinary integration, including methodological integration, and the human side of fostering interactions and communication.” Therefore, it is not surprising that the chapter ends with the statement, “a focus on interdisciplinarity revives a sense of the academy as a holistic intellectual and social organism, integrated into the wider community, in which multiple flows and exchanges between all of its parts ensure its vitality” (Soskice, 2016 , p. 70).

In 2019 , Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies dedicated an entire issue to the work of the most prolific American scholar of interdisciplinarity, Julie Thompson-Klein (Augsburg, 2019 ). Her newest book is scheduled to be published in 2021 with the title Beyond Interdisciplinarity: Boundary Work, Communication, and Collaboration in the 21st Century . The book focuses on a full range of sector-crossing, including not only academic disciplines, but also occupational professions, interdisciplinary fields, public and private spheres, local communities, project stakeholders, and countries and cultures across the globe, wherever knowledge production is occurring. This new book is an update and extension of her earlier work, Crossing Boundaries: Knowledge, Disciplinarities, and Interdisciplinarities (1996) .

Academic Discipline

Disciplines are the basic units in the structure of knowledge that have been “historically delineated by departmentalization. Within each discipline there are rational, accidental, and arbitrary factors responsible for the peculiar combination of subject matter, techniques of investigation, orienting thought models, principles of analysis, methods of explanation and aesthetic standards” (Miller, 1982 , p. 4). They constitute the bureaucratic subcultures of the modern university. The modern disciplinary system was established at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century .

Many scholars have tried their hand at the task of explicating the characteristics of an academic discipline, but the list provided by Arthur King and John Brownell ( 1966 ) in The Curriculum and the Disciplines of Knowledge still seems among the clearest and most comprehensive. Below is this author’s version of their original list:

Field of demarcated study (subject matter boundaries, inclusions and exclusions).

Shared set of underlying premises (basic assumptions about how the world works).

Shared set of concepts (jargon).

Shared set of organizing theories/models (explanatory frameworks).

Shared set of truth-determining methods (what counts as data—how to make sense of them—i.e. research protocols).

Shared set of values and norms (preferred approaches to the material field that is studied by the discipline—e.g. economists prefer the approach of the free market; also preferred conduct by the practitioners of the discipline).

These six qualities cumulatively come together as a unique perspective—a coherent world view—a disciplinary paradigm or matrix.

Community of scholars who share this world view (professional identity—academic tribes ).

Shared set of literature and great scholars in the discipline.

Agreement on what to teach (structure and content of the basic texts and curriculum from the introductory course to the advanced graduate seminars).

Means of reinforcing the professional standards (graduate training, hiring and tenure control, associations, conferences, peer-reviewed journals, and grant-making processes).

Departmental home in a college/university (bureaucratic recognition, resource allocation and territorial ownership).

Ideal-type conceptualizations of this nature have great heuristic value, but applying them in the “real world” becomes problematic. After all, every group of faculty organized around a defined academic interest that has aspirations for permanence, wish to be known, at least eventually, as a discipline. Recognition as a discipline means more prestige and the prospect of more dependable institutional support. A working solution to this definitional problem is to limit the designation of discipline to those departmental groupings that appeared at the beginning of the 20th century and have institutionally solidified their presence in the academy over the past 100 plus years. John Ziman called them the “Grand Old Disciplines” ( 1999 , p. 73). Thus, in the social sciences, the conventional and building-block disciplines would be Anthropology, Economics, Geography, History, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology. Without some kind of limitation on the use of the designation discipline, even the distinction between discipline and interdisciplinary can become meaningless. Nevertheless, the solution proposed is admittedly an arbitrary one, but the historical process that created these disciplinary conglomerates in the first place was also a relatively arbitrary process. Eric Wolf argued that the field of classical political economy was divided into the specialized disciplines of economics, political science, sociology and anthropology in a process that lost touch with the real world.

Ostensibly engaged in the study of human behavior, the various disciplines parcel out the subject among themselves. Each then proceeds to set up a model, seemingly a means to explain “hard,” observable facts, yet actually an ideologically loaded scheme geared to a narrow definition of subject matter. (Wolf, 1982 , p. 10)

The establishment of these specialized disciplines at the beginning of the 20th century has been called the “academic enclosure” process (Becher, 1989 ). In a few decades, these disciplines had enclosed themselves in departmental organizations that gave them long-term bureaucratic protection. Yet these disciplines, according to Weingart and Stehr, are “the eyes through which modern society sees and forms its images about the world, frames its experience, and learns, thus shaping its own future or reconstituting the past” (Weingart & Stehr, 1999 , p. xi). Stephen Turner argued that “disciplines are shotgun marriages . . . and are kept together by the reality of the market and the value of the protection of the market that has been created by employment requirements and expectations (Turner, 1999 , p. 55). Turner believed that the disciplines’ animosity toward interdisciplinary initiatives was primarily driven by protectionism (p. 50).

The seventh disciplinary characteristic notes that the first six qualities come together in a world view that is unique to each discipline. Comparing world view components is a useful method for both disciplinary and interdisciplinary scholars. The concept has German origins and has been productively utilized in many academic and non-academic venues for 150 years. This author was introduced into the way anthropologists use the world view method by Robert Redfield ( 1956 ). According to Redfield, every culture or sub-culture has a world view, its embedded “mental map.” It provides guidance on the nature of the world, how we know the truth about it, what is right and wrong behavior, and what emotionally matters the most. Cognitive linguist George Lakoff contended that “World views are complex neural circuits fixed in the brain. People can only understand what fits the neural circuitry in their brains. Real facts can be filtered out by world views” (Lakoff, 2017 ). Critical psychologist Michael Mascolo noted “the concept of world view is founded on the epistemological principle that observation of the physical and social world is a mediated rather than a direct process” (Mascolo, 2014 , p. 2086). He reaffirmed Redfield’s point that a complete world view has an ontology, an epistemology, and a normative belief system.

Table 1. Post-World War II Macro Social Sciences: Comparative Attributes

Source : Miller, R. C. ( 2018 ). International political economy: Contrasting world views (2nd ed., p. 17). London, UK: Routledge.

This author has used world view as the comparative method in understanding the different schools of thought in international political economy (Miller, 2018 ). One step in this process was identifying the comparative attributes of the basic contributing disciplines. A summary of that analysis is in Table 1 : Post World War II Macro Social Sciences: Comparative Attributes. Economics, political science, and sociology are compared in six fundamental dimensions: core subject matter, central concepts, explanatory strategies, normative orientation, data collection, and data analysis.

Interdisciplinary Approaches

Interdisciplinary approaches in the social sciences involve, at a minimum, the application of insights and perspectives from more than one conventional discipline to the understanding of social phenomena. Interdisciplinarity , on the other hand, is an analytically reflective study of the methodological, theoretical, and institutional implications of implementing interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research. Strictly speaking, interdisciplinarians are those who engage in the scholarly field of interdisciplinarity, though there are many faculty and others who participate effectively in interdisciplinary projects without being reflexive about its methods, theories, and institutional arrangements. On the other hand, interdisciplinary participants are more likely to be aware of their underlying world views than disciplinarians.

There are many ways of differentiating between types of interdisciplinary approaches, and in fact, of defining the basic term, interdisciplinary. For instance, the National Academies of Science propose that:

“Interdisciplinary research is a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research practice.” (National Academy of Sciences, 2005 , p. 39)

This definition privileges the process of “integration” as well as identifying “disciplines” as the primary source of the ingredients to be integrated. Lisa Lattuca, in her faculty-interview study Creating Interdisciplinarity ( 2001 ) argued that post-structuralists, like herself and all the humanities professors and most of the social science professors in her study, reject both of these privileging assumptions. They argue that integration presumes harmonious order, whereas reality may be full of oppositions and contradictions, and that using disciplines as the basic raw material legitimizes their monopoly over knowledge. However, all of the natural scientists in her study were comfortable with the type of definition proposed by the National Academies (Lattuca, 2001 , p. 104). The Political Science Task Force Report also accepted it. Nevertheless, interdisciplinary approaches could be broadened to include the processes of juxtaposition, application, synthesis, and transcendence as well as integration.

By utilizing this broader definition of interdisciplinary approaches that includes processes other than integration, the logic of the original OECD typology retains its efficacy. That typology divided interdisciplinary approaches into multidisciplinary, crossdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. What follows is this author’s version of that typology.

Multidisciplinary Approaches

Multidisciplinary approaches involve the simple act of juxtaposing parts of several conventional disciplines in an effort to get a broader understanding of some common theme or problem. No systematic effort is made to combine or integrate across these disciplines. This is the weakest interdisciplinary approach, and it actually enhances the stature of the participating disciplines because their identities and practices are not threatened. They do not need to change any of their protocols, yet they can claim their openness to interdisciplinary cooperation. Cafeteria-style curricula, team-taught courses, ad hoc research teams, and conference panels could be examples of this approach.

Crossdisciplinary Approaches

Crossdisciplinary approaches involve real interaction across the conventional disciplines, though the extent of communication and thus combination, synthesis or integration of concepts and/or methods varies considerably. Since the variety of crossdisciplinary approaches is so great, this author has created a further six-fold typology. The six sub-categories of crossdisciplinary approaches are: (a) topics of social interest, (b) professional preparation, (c) shared analytical methods, (d) shared concepts, (e) hybrids, and (f) shared life experiences (Miller, 1982 ). Hundreds of crossdisciplinary combinations have been created over the course of the last 100 years. Some of these combinations have been ephemeral, some long lasting, but poorly articulated, and some have developed an institutionalized coherence that rivals the conventional disciplines. The latter in this author’s taxonomy are the interdisciplines . David Long, one of the authors in Aalto’s first book called them “neodisciplines” (Long, 2011 , pp. 52–59).

Transdisciplinary Approaches

Transdisciplinary approaches, according to Jantsch’s classic essay ( 1972 ), involve articulated conceptual frameworks that seek to transcend the more limited world views of the specialized disciplines. These frameworks are holistic in intent. In the 1972 OECD volume, the transdisciplinary approaches mentioned were general systems, structuralism, Marxism, and mathematics. The 21st century transdisciplinary movement in Europe believes that the broader public should be involved in providing, testing, evaluating, and implementing knowledge across all fields. Academic disciplines, therefore, are only a part of the picture.

Social Topics

Important social topics frequently attract members from several disciplines. They start out as multidisciplinary groupings, but over time continuous communication creates a new crossdisciplinary field of study. Examples would include environmental studies, cognitive science, gerontology, labor studies, peace studies, and urban studies. The study of geographical regions, area studies, is an interesting topical example because of its close relationship to international relations.

Professional Preparation

Another organizing principle for crossdisciplinary combinations is relevant knowledge for professional preparation . Examples include business management, diplomatic studies, education, public administration, health services, and policy studies. There are undoubtedly more students, faculty, and practitioners in this professional category than in any of the other categories, but the self-conscious attention to their interdisciplinary nature is very limited. Nevertheless, there are exceptions; for instance, Donald Schön ( 1983 ) in his book The Reflective Practitioner observed that the professions are split between the rational technocratic view of the more theoretical and conventional perspective vs. the more particularistic uncertainty of the actual field situations. He tried to find a middle ground between these extremes by proposing a reflexive approach that combines theory and practice. He argued that professionals should be aware of the frames within which they operate so that they are open to critiquing the one they are using and even shift to another if the situation requires it. Schon’s proposed approach is similar to the interdisciplinary method of comparative world views or multi-perspective analysis (Miller, 1982 ).

Policy studies, a growing field in recent years, manifest this internal tension rather dramatically. In the early 1950s, Harold Lasswell expressed his belief that through a rational and scientific process the best policy options could be identified and implemented toward the betterment of democratic objectives. Some of the analytical methods he advocated, such as benefit/cost analysis, are still being applied today. However, his approach has been criticized as being undemocratic, that is, “scientists know better,” and incredibly unrealistic as the political decision-making process is anything but rational. Studying the “different perspectives that underlie conflict in public policy arenas . . . is more illuminating and ultimately more practical than quixotically tilting at scientific windmills” (Smith & Larimer, 2009 , p. 18).

Shared Analytical Methods

Similar research methods, especially the quantitative ones, are often shared across the disciplines. They provide a basis for bringing methods-oriented faculty members together in more permanent crossdisciplinary associations. These groups have conferences, journals, and even academic programs. Examples of these shared analytical methods include statistics, computer modeling, game theory, and information theory (Miller, 1982 ). However, despite the potential cost savings, conventional disciplinary departments are usually unwilling to replace their own methods courses with the more generic ones from these crossdisciplinary programs.

Shared Concepts

There are some major concepts that appear in many disciplines that have the potential for crossdisciplinary integration. Classic examples of shared concepts include energy, value, flows, role, evolution, development, and cycles (Abbey, 1976 ). George Homans, a sociologist in Harvard’s crossdisciplinary Social Relations Department in the 1960s and 70s used exchange as his main integrating concept. The source of his inspiration was rational exchange theory from the discipline of economics (today it would be called rational choice theory). He made an explicit effort to use benefit/cost exchange as the basis of a theory of human behavior that could integrate across disciplines. Homans argued that although the specifics of exchange relationships may vary across different types of human experience, their overall interactive form may be quite similar (Homans, 1974 ).

The concept of development was dominant in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s under the crossdisciplinary umbrella of modernization theory. Modernization theory grew out of the need to achieve some degree of coherent coordination between the different and sometimes contradictory development strategies proposed by the separate social science disciplines. Economists argued that development would occur if sufficient amounts of capital investment are made and markets are developed. Political scientists argued that development requires modern bureaucracies, effective governance, and political participation. Sociologists argued that modern social institutions such as factories, schools, and mass media are key components in any development plan. Anthropologists argued that the residents of poor countries had to change their traditional cultural values into modern ones if development were to occur. Psychologists argued that individual personality development is the key, shifting the orientation from ascription to achievement. Modernization theory tried to bring all of these diverse perspectives together. It was the central organizing theory of the crossdisciplinary field of development studies.

The most widely recognized type of crossdisciplinary approach is undoubtedly the hybrids . Hybrids combine parts of two existing, related disciplines to form interstitial new crossdisciplines that attempt to bridge perceived gaps between disciplines (Miller, 1982 ). Well-known examples include social psychology, political economy, biogeography, and historical sociology. Sometimes the hybrid crossdisciplinary fields generate new theories whose promise is so great that they are borrowed back into their constituent disciplines. Social psychology’s symbolic interaction theory is a case in point. In fact, Dogan and Pahre ( 1990 ) argue that hybrid activity is the most likely source of innovative advances.

One of the most important hybrids in the interdisciplinary realm of international relations is political economy, especially in the form of international political economy (IPE). IPE uses the multi-perspective approach mentioned above. It juxtaposes the competing explanatory perspectives of the market model from economics, institutionalism from political science and sociology, and historical materialism from classical Marxist political economy (Miller, 2018 ). The differing perspectives provide a rich treasury of insights, understandings, critiques, and research strategies.

Shared Life Experiences

The basic premise in crossdisciplinary programs based on shared life experiences is that certain groups have shared a common experience of oppression that gives them a shared identity, a shared rejection of mainstream knowledge that reinforces this oppression, and a shared political agenda to replace the unjust social conditions with an egalitarian society. Three major examples of this category are women’s studies, ethnic studies, and post-colonial studies. These crossdisciplinary fields entered the academy as outgrowths of the social movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. They started out as multidisciplinary challengers to the disciplinary/departmental power structure of the university, yet over the past four decades women’s studies and ethnic studies have evolved increasingly into discipline-like programs, in other words, interdisciplines. According to some observers, one of the costs of this institutional acceptance was the loss of one of the early objectives of these movements, social change activism in the community (Messer-Davidow, 2002 ).

Virtually all of the over 700 women’s studies programs in the United States teach feminist theory, an integrating perspective that focuses on socially constructed gender systems and standpoint analysis. Standpoint theory contends that how one perceives any human condition depends on the position that one occupies in the society. Those who are being oppressed are going to see things very differently than those who are doing the oppressing.

According to Ann Tickner, feminism challenges the neo-positivist and state-centric orientation of international relations in the United States. The unequal relationships that pervade the world are socially constructed and vary from place to place, with women suffering universally from male-dominated exercises of power. Furthermore, dichotomies such as those that “separate the mind (rationality) from the body (nature) diminish the legitimacy of women as ‘knowers’” (Tickner, 2014 , p. 86). Knowledge should not be pursued for its own sake or for the benefit of the state but in order to facilitate the emancipation of the oppressed (Tickner, 2014 , pp. 176–77).

Theorists in African-American or Africana studies have made a deliberate effort to incorporate the perspective of women in their key concept, Afrocentricity . The meaning of Afrocentricity is somewhat contested within the interdiscipline, but there is no doubt about what it opposes, namely Eurocentrism. Among the specified features of Eurocentrism are reductionism, individualism, and domination over nature, whereas Afrocentricity is associated with holism, community, and harmony with nature (Azibo, 2001 , p. 424). Karanja Keita Carroll ( 2008 ) contended that the “Afrikan worldview” has embedded within it an African culture-specific axiology, epistemology, logic, cosmology, ontology, teleology, and ideology that necessitate a research methodology that is consistent with these components. Instead of the Eurocentric approach that emphasizes objective detachment, separation between the knower and the known, material reality as primary, either/or logic, and knowledge for knowledge’s sake, the Afrikan worldview emphasizes full engagement, the blending of knower and known, the spiritual essence of reality as primary, both/and logic, and knowledge for the betterment of African peoples. Africana research is about participation, relationships, interdependence, and the liberation of Africana people (Carroll, 2008 , pp. 4–27).

Advocates for transdisciplinary approaches often directly challenge the efficacy of conventional disciplines, claiming that they are part of the problem rather than the solution, especially when the objective is the mitigation of complex social problems. Proponents of transdisciplinary approaches frequently accuse the hegemonic conventional disciplines of protecting the status quo rather than promoting progressive change. The framers of some transdisciplinary approaches see them as providing alternatives to the world views of the conventional disciplines that they would replace. Examples of discipline-replacement transdisciplinary approaches would be general systems theory, Marxism, cultural studies and sustainability studies. Examples of transdisciplinary approaches that could supplement rather than replace conventional disciplines would be symbolic interactionism, rational choice theory, and gender theory (Miller, 1982 ).

General systems theory, the transdisciplinary approach that Jantsch favored, contends that nature is a hierarchy of similar structures up through the whole succession of physical, biological, and social systems. There are similar developmental patterns throughout nature, but there are different paths that can lead to the same destination. Through the organization of energy from the environment (negative entropy) and communication with the environment (negative feedback), systems seek to maintain dynamic equilibria. This theory conceives of nature as a holistic set of relationships that thrives on diversity.

David Easton introduced systems thinking to political science in the 1950s and 1960s because he felt the discipline was too narrow. “I am not a political scientist but rather a social scientist interested in political problems” (Aldrich, 2014 , pp. 52–53). Currently, Carolyn and Patrick James continue Easton’s systems approach with their application of “systemism” to foreign policy analysis. However, in their view, systemism moves away from Easton’s bias toward homeostatic proclivities and emphasis on the macro level. Systemism includes both the macro and the micro and all forms of interaction between them (James & James, 2015 ).

Since the 1960s, general systems theory has been the main transdisciplinary approach of environmental or ecological studies (Costanza, 1990 ). Today, this field is most likely to be called sustainability studies. In a major conference on transdisciplinarity held in Switzerland in 2000 , sustainability was put forward not only as the major reason for the necessity of transdisciplinarity, but also as a transdisciplinary approach in itself (Klein et al., 2001 ). However, Egon Becker argues that sustainability studies is a “transdisciplinary field” that is more of a “conceptual and heuristic framework” than a general theory ( 1999 , pp. 284–285).

The lack of an agreed-upon general theory for engaging in the intellectual process of integrating across disciplines led William Newell to search for the most comprehensive and functionally effective transdisciplinary theory. He decided on general systems. But the first difficulty that Newell faced was deciding on which version of general systems theory to embrace. He identified eight possibilities: chaos, complex systems, fractal geometry, nonlinear dynamics, second-order cybernetics, self-organizing criticality, neo-evolutionary biology, and quantum mechanics (Newell, 2001 ). After studying them all, he chose complex systems as the preferred approach. Newell ( 2001 , p. 7) explains: “Specifically, the theory of interdisciplinarity studies that I am advocating focuses on the form of complexity that is a feature of the structure as well as the behavior of a complex system, on complexity generated by nonlinear relationships among a large number of components, and on the influence of the components and relationships of the system on its overall pattern of behavior.” Newell presented his preferred theory to a panel of well-known interdisciplinarians for their reactions. None of the six respondents agreed with his suggestion, primarily because they did not believe that the range and diversity of interdisciplinary possibilities could be captured within one theoretical framework (Issues in Integrative Studies 19, 2001 , pp, 1–148)

One of the respondents to Newell’s proposal, Richard Carp ( 2001 ), took issue with his basic premise, namely that the knowledge to be integrated via complex systems theory comes exclusively from existing disciplines. Carp insisted on widening the knowledge sources. He stated that we should stop thinking of “the disciplines as unique sources or resources for knowledge and thought” (Carp, 2001 , p. 74). Carp argued that we should “learn from multiple knowledge formations” (p. 75). Disciplines should not be the “gatekeepers.” The universities are just one of the many institutions in society that not only possess knowledge but can also create it. We should not be talking about interdisciplinary studies but “knowledge formations” (p. 75).

In Europe, the transdisciplinary movement has taken several different directions. The Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences conference in 2000 promoted a process form of transdisciplinarity that transcended not only disciplinary boundaries, but also the boundary between the scientific establishment on the one hand and the users of the results of scientific research on the other hand. Users include government agencies, businesses, non-profit organizations, and members of the general public. Since all of these groups are stakeholders in the solution of the societal problems that science has an obligation to address, they should all be present at the table in the research process. In fact, the more stakeholders involved, the more “robust” the research. “We take the contributions to the informing and the rationalizing of actions in their societal context to be the main performance of problem-oriented research, and by implication, also of transdisciplinary research” (Zierhofer & Burger, 2007 , p. 57). In other words, according to the Swiss school, the purpose of transdisciplinary research is to seek and facilitate the implementation of solutions for societal problems, such as violence, poverty, and global warming, that serve the common good (Pohl & Hadorn, 2008 ). Norwegian professor Willy Ostreng, in his major book on interdisciplinary research, agrees and adds that as transdisciplinarity traverses the boundaries between science and stakeholder expertise it creates a new science, a “post-normal” science (Ostreng, 2010 , pp. 29–33).

Another European school of transdisciplinarity is centered around Basarab Nicolescu, a French academic. His group is organized around the International Center for Transdisciplinary Research. The movement’s objective is the achievement of the totality of meaning across all the sciences, art, religion, and cultural perspectives. That endeavor involves the search for relations and isomorphisms across all realms. The French school’s epistemology is explicitly non-Aristotelian in that it wishes to go beyond lineal and binary logic. They recognize different levels of reality in which different modes of understanding prevail. They start with the differences between classical physics and quantum physics, between reason and intuition, between information and consciousness, and between linear and non-linear logics. Non-linear logic is explained as the unity of oppositions, the inclusion of the excluded middle, and the evolutionary process of ever more comprehensive syntheses. Manfred Max-Neef calls this epistemology “strong transdisciplinarity.” He sees some of it in the natural sciences, especially in quantum physics and complexity theories. However, he does not see any of it in the social sciences. He sees economics as the most retrogressive and therefore one of the biggest obstacles to a unified, spiritually evolved, sustainable future (Max-Neef, 2005 , pp. 5–16).

There are some interesting analogies between “strong transdisciplinarity” and the field of cultural studies, for which many claim transdisciplinary status. Both approaches are strongly critical of the excessive reliance on rationality and analytic reductionism, as well as of the fragmented specialization of the structure of knowledge. The location of cultural studies at the interface of the humanities and the social sciences enables its practitioners to bring together their different concepts of culture and then to add the additional dimension of everyday meanings and practices present among the broader population (Moran, 2002 ).

It is generally agreed that the institutional origin of cultural studies was at Birmingham University in 1964 . The founders had an anti-establishment orientation informed by Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci and French post-structuralist Michel Foucault. The Birmingham group wished to understand and challenge the power over the general population that the cultural elites exercised through the mass media and the power that the intellectual elites exercised through their control of the structure of knowledge, that is, the departmental/disciplinary structure of the academy. When cultural studies diffused to the United States, the field lost some of its political agenda; however, it retained its emphasis on popular culture. Numerous academic fields are identified as contributing to cultural studies, including cultural anthropology, textual criticism, art and social history, linguistics, sociology, aural and visual culture, philosophy of science, political economy, communication studies, psychology, and feminism. These multiple sources led Joe Moran ( 2002 , p. 50) to comment, “Cultural studies could be said to be synonymous with interdisciplinarity itself.” It is both ironic and instructive then that the founding enclave of cultural studies, the Birmingham Centre, was shut down by the higher education authorities of the United Kingdom in 2002 , presumably because of the “low quality of its research production” (Klein, 2005 , pp. 52–53).

Consequences

Advocating explicitly for interdisciplinary approaches in a discipline-controlled environment can be risky. It can be politically risky for administrative units and personally risky for faculty, especially for junior faculty. Interdisciplinary approaches do have implications for the structure and politics of knowledge. They have implications for International Relations, especially if the study of international relations is considered an interdisciplinary field. A 2002 publication assessing the field came to this conclusion:

While there seems to be little problem in designating international relations as a “field,” the symposium left unclear whether this field is most properly a subfield of political science, a subfield of several disciplines, an amalgam of the subfields of multiple disciplines or an academic discipline in its own right. (Puchala, 2002 , pp. xvi–xvii)

The dominant location for International Relations in the United States is as a subfield of Political Science (Aldrich, 2014 , p. 5). In the United Kingdom, however, the field of International Relations is more often treated as a separate discipline (Waever, 1998 ). How the field is conceptualized and institutionalized does have implications for its intellectual strategies, the identities of its practitioners, and its access to resources, both on and off-campus. David Long has argued that “it matters whether IR is considered a discipline in its own right or not. It matters in teaching and research not only by what is cut off, but what is encouraged” (Long, 2011 , pp. 59–60). Rudra Sil warned that “inflexible disciplinary structures may very well come to constitute a hindrance to whatever ‘progress’ is possible in our collective efforts to understand aspects of international life” (Sil & Doherty, 2000 , p. 6). Nevertheless, American political scientists are firmly committed to keeping international relations within their fold. A 2002 doctoral dissertation tells the tale of how, in 1986 , the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) successfully absorbed the multidisciplinary graduate program in International Relations. It is an interesting tale of money and powerful personalities, and it would probably be more accurately described as a hostile takeover (Plantan, 2002 ).

Even though the author of the dissertation, Frank Plantan, used the language of interdisciplinarity, he did not employ the conceptual distinctions presented above. That is partly because the graduate program of International Relations at Penn was just a multidisciplinary collection of volunteer faculty members from 10 different departments with no separate, dedicated financial support. By centering his analysis on the Penn case study, Plantan limited the operational meaning of interdisciplinary to this loose arrangement of multidisciplinary specialists, an unstable and vulnerable setup. Yet in his discussion of the intellectual development of the field he mentioned several integrating strategies that have crossdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary qualities. His examples included realism, functionalism, behavioralism, neoliberal institutionalism, rational choice, and constructivism. However, in his historical analysis Plantan saw these theoretical perspectives as ideas to fight over rather than as integrating strategies. In his experience, the competitive departmental environment triumphed over interdisciplinary cooperation. Plantan ( 2002 , pp. 374–375) concluded, “The hefty sunk costs of an existing tenured faculty and staff, and a historic mission (however dubious) in the colleges or university’s broader curriculum, accords them a staying power, an inertia, that no interdisciplinary program can hope to achieve whatever its intellectual merit.”

When Robert Axelrod, the President of the American Political Science Association, established a Task Force in 2007 on Interdisciplinarity, he argued that interdisciplinary research is borrowing across disciplinary boundaries, both importing and exporting, but especially exporting (Axelrod, 2008 ). The Task Force Report (Aldrich, 2014 ) argued that interdisciplinary work begins with faculty who are prepared with accumulated deep knowledge in a discipline. To insure that interdisciplinary teaching and research do not endanger the institutional power of the conventional disciplines, the Report placed a major emphasis on discipline-based peer review. They contended that peer review is the preeminent means by which “the value of scientific knowledge can be established,” and peer review is only credible if it comes from an established discipline (Aldrich, 2014 , pp. 13–23). They continued, “Disciplinarity has not yet been successfully transcended as a means to address key values of scholarship—particularly to resolve contested claims about knowledge, to anchor peer review and the authority it carries with it to protect academic freedom, or to manage the labor market” (p. 23).

Interdisciplinarians would find this reasoning self-serving at the very least. After all, one of the main reasons for engaging in truly innovative interdisciplinary activity is to break free of the narrow, restrictive and presumably inadequate contexts of the established disciplines. The National Academies Report ( 2005 ) argues that there are four “drivers” for interdisciplinary research: inherent complexity of nature and society, need to explore areas that are not confined to a single discipline, need to solve societal problems, and the power of new technologies (p. 40). This Report gives several examples, but the most comprehensive is the case of climate change. Research on this complex and vital issue involves 10,000 scientists in 80 countries from more than 20 disciplines, including agricultural scientists, archeologists, atmospheric chemists, biologists, climatologists, ecologists, economists, environmental historians, geographers, geologists, hydrologists, mathematicians, meteorologists, plant physiologists, political scientists, oceanographers, remote sensing scientists, and sociologists (p. 31).

The established disciplines have been attacked by the post-structuralists for being Eurocentric, sexist, racist, pseudo-objective, status quo-protective and structured in a way that is disconnected from reality. To this group of critics both the ontologies and epistemologies of the conventional structure of knowledge are unacceptable (Moran, 2002 ). Paradoxically, some of the academics who espouse these views have managed to find an institutionalized niche in the university in departments or centers of cultural studies, ethnic studies, post-colonial studies, and women’s studies. However, in the process of institutionalization, they seem to have followed the advice of the Political Science Task Force Report: if interdisciplinary projects want to be successful—that is, achieve bureaucratic recognition with regular budgets and assigned faculty positions—you need to behave like an established discipline (Messer-Davidow, 2002 ). Besides those interdisciplines that have successfully entered the university structure since the 1960s, there were many generic interdisciplinary programs that also evolved into departments even though they were founded as challengers to the disciplinary/departmental system. Evidently, the generic-interdisciplinary departments were perceived by the established departments as the most threatening as well as the most vulnerable. As a consequence, whenever conventional departments found sympathetic administrators they embarked on a campaign for their abolition. In the Politics of Interdisciplinary Studies the stories of several of these program eliminations are told. They include programs at Wayne State, Miami of Ohio, Appalachian State, and San Francisco State, among others. (Augsburg & Henry, 2009 ).

The Political Science Task Force Report also describes how the discipline-based peer-review process works in the federal grant-making process, the largest source of extramural funding in the United States. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is probably organized the most pervasively around the conventional or established disciplines. Therefore, disciplinary criteria are used to evaluate most grant proposals submitted to the NSF. There are small programs within NSF that seem to facilitate interdisciplinary projects: The Measurement, Methodology and Statistics Program and the Human and Social Dynamics Program.

Although the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is organized functionally, its reviewing process also relies largely on disciplinary faculty and their criteria for quality. Federal funding agencies reflect and respect disciplinary boundaries, though they do seek ways to attack new problems through interdisciplinary efforts (Aldrich, 2014 , pp. 101–111). However, the ostensibly integrative interdisciplinary projects they fund frequently end up as merely multidisciplinary.

A group that studied the grant-making experience of the Academy of Finland from 1997–2004 discovered, to their surprise, that almost half of the grants (42%) had some degree of interdisciplinarity despite the disciplinary orientations of the review boards. The solution of the study authors to the disciplinary/interdisciplinary divide is to consider all research interdisciplinary. They reason that since disciplinary boundaries are so amorphous and so frequently permeated that maintaining these distinctions is artificial and inhibitive of creativity in research (Bruun, Hukkinen, Huutoniemi, & Klein, 2005 , p. 169). However, ignoring disciplinary boundaries and their associated departmental bureaucracy seems not only unrealistic about the confining power of the disciplinary structure of knowledge, but also politically naive as well.

A further interesting dimension of the International Studies Association (ISA) is the relationship between its many crossdisciplinary sections and the dominant Political Science discipline. Of the 29 sections ( 2019 ), 22 seem crossdisciplinary in nature. Examples include interdisciplinary studies, human rights studies, environmental studies, peace studies, feminist theory and gender studies, and global development studies. For years the leadership of the ISA seemed merely to presume, despite the organization’s claim to interdisciplinarity, that all the section program chairs could gather at the annual Political Science Convention to review the draft program of the upcoming ISA Convention. The implicit assumption in this past ISA practice was that the section program chairs were most likely political scientists who would be attending the annual Political Science Convention. This assumption always struck this author as problematic, especially in light of the organization’s mission statement and its interdisciplinary membership. The greater efficiency of the Internet facilitated the discontinuance of this practice.

The history of the relationship of area studies to International Relations is a fascinating one in itself. The ISA section sponsoring this contribution, the Interdisciplinary Studies Section, was originally established by area studies scholars according to Fred Riggs, one of its founders. In the 1970s, area studies scholars were contemplating founding a separate umbrella organization for all area studies programs, but they were persuaded to stay within the ISA as an independent section. Area studies centers were established in elite universities after WWII as part of a national Cold War strategy. They were “among the most far-reaching interdisciplinary projects in American higher education” (Aldrich, 2014 , p. 89). Their responsibility was to provide information on the geographic regions of the world in support of the national interests of the United States. Participating faculty came mostly from language, literature, anthropology, history, and political science (international relations) departments. The centers, despite their holistic aspirations, were multidisciplinary in form and particularistic in methodology. Money and guidance ostensibly came from private sources, such as the Ford Foundation and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), but they actually came from the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency (Cumings, 2002 ).

In the first few decades after World War II, the study of international relations was significantly oriented to area studies because the money flowing into the universities supported area studies type of knowledge. The legacy of that emphasis is reflected in a 2006 Teagle Foundation survey that found in the responses of 109 Liberal Arts Colleges, half of the top ten interdisciplinary majors were in area and international studies. Since the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, extramural teaching and research support has dwindled significantly for area and international studies. Lloyd Rudolph comments, “after the close of the Cold War, the disciplines and the ‘methodists’ succeeded in attacking and defeating the area studies orientation of Ford and via Ford the SSRC” (Aldrich, 2014 , p. 70). Area studies programs have had to endure criticism from those who see them as a “colonial enterprise” (faculty in post-colonial and ethnic studies programs), while many in the disciplines see them as lacking any theoretical coherence and methodological rigor. From the perspective of conventional disciplinarians, their region-centric particularism and their multidisciplinary structures make them the poster examples of what ails interdisciplinary programs (Miyoshi & Harootunian, 2002 ; Szanton, 2004 ).

Nevertheless, despite the continuing identity crises in area studies, they have managed to survive. Their latest restoration positions them as part of the internationalization of the academy, presumably made necessary by the knowledge demands of globalization and regional hot spots such as the Middle East. However, the continuing viability of area studies remains uncertain. As one observer noted, the different area studies faculties are as separated from each other as the members of disciplines are from each other. “By and large, the world area studies tribes inhabit relatively watertight intellectual domains” (Lambert, 1991 , p. 184). This observation is consistent with the author’s experience. As an administrator in charge of curriculum development, he suggested that the area studies programs could share a core course in which the common methodological principles of area studies could be explored. The area studies faculty, however, were not interested. Nevertheless, David Szanton hopes that participation in area studies programs have helped to “deparochialize” disciplinary faculty, though it does not seem to have lowered the heights of the disciplinary walls. Maybe by being one of the first interdisciplinary programs to use identity as one of its key concepts, area studies may have prepared the way for ethnic studies, women’s studies and post-colonial studies (Szanton, 2004 ).

The case of international political economy (IPE) also raises a number of interesting interdisciplinary issues. In its reincarnation over the last four decades or so, it fits in the category of crossdisciplinary hybrids. IPE’s location in the structure of knowledge is as confused as International Relations. The disciplines of Economics, Political Science and Sociology all claim IPE as a subfield. However, Marxists, in the tradition of classical political economy, see political economy as an overarching, holistic frame in which cultural, economic, political, and social dimensions are inter-related subsets. According to Marxists, the establishment of the specialized disciplines around these dimensions is a part of the hegemonic strategy of capitalism to obfuscate the oppressive nature of the capitalist system.

The late British political economist Susan Strange, a non-Marxist, complained about the lack of knowledge sharing across disciplinary boundaries. She was especially critical of the way in which economists and political scientists ignored each other and their respective knowledge domains. She accused American scholars of International Relations of being too narrowly connected to state-centric political models that did not include serious economic analysis. In fact, she argued, “Far from being a subdiscipline of international relations, IPE should claim that international relations are a subdiscipline of IPE” (see Strange, in Lawton, Rosenau, & Verdun, 2000 , p. 412). Susan Strange is among the “Magnificent Seven” that Benjamin Cohen singled out in his intellectual history of international political economy (Cohen, 2008 , p. 8). She was the leader of the “British School,” which is more holistic, interdisciplinary, and explicitly normative in contrast to the “American School,” which is more positivistic in orientation. Cohen continued his geographic schools of thought analysis of IPE in a 2014 publication, Advanced Introduction to International Political Economy . In response to criticism of the limitations of his original dichotomy, he added schools of thought based in continental Europe, Latin America, and China. He also recognized “leftist” or “heterodox” schools in the United States and the British Commonwealth. However, his geographic schools of thought approach focused primarily on national/regional and cultural differences, rather than theoretical.

Members of all schools of international political economy would probably be comfortable having their field identified as an “interdiscipline” (Underhill, 2000 ). An interdiscipline is a crossdisciplinary field that approximates the characteristics of an academic discipline, but it does not qualify as a 20th century conventional discipline. In fact, maybe International Relations would also best be characterized as an “interdiscipline.” However, that identification still leaves unanswered where International Relations fits in the power hierarchy of knowledge.

According to Barry Buzan and Richard Little, members of the English or British School of International Relations, the widespread placement of International Relations in the United States as a subfield of Political Science has significantly limited its theoretical potential. Buzan and Little ( 2001 ) argued that American International Relations is dominated by an ahistorical, Eurocentric, Westphalian, political/military model. One of the consequences of this approach is the preference for “fragmentation into the anarchy of self-governing and paradigm-warring islands of theory rather than integration into the imperial or federative archipelago of theoretically pluralist grand theory” (Buzan & Little, 2001 , p. 31). Margaret Hermann, in her 1998 ISA presidential address, expressed seemingly similar sentiments about fragmentation: “The field has become an administrative holding company rather than an intellectually coherent area of inquiry or a community of scholars” (Hermann, 2002 , p. 16). However, her solution is a respectful dialogue that builds a “mosaic of multiple perspectives” around problems that are issues of “world politics” (pp. 31–33). She does not seem to be recommending “grand theory” nor going beyond Political Science. Thus, hers is an intra-disciplinary rather than an inter-disciplinary solution. On the other hand, Hermann does seem to embrace the “interdisciplinary mental outlook” advocated by the authors of the pioneering OECD Report (Apostel, 1972 ).

Understanding the different types of interdisciplinary approaches and their differentiation from disciplinary approaches gives one deeper insight into the knowledge production and transmission process. If International Relations is to be a truly independent, interdisciplinary field that can take full advantage of multiple perspectives and methodologies in order to deal more effectively with global problems, it needs to liberate itself from the embrace of confining disciplines, especially Political Science.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the following for helping to improve this article: Stanley Bailis, Felicia Krishna-Hensel, Renee Marlin-Bennett, Tina Mavrikos-Adamou, Anja K. Miller, and Julie Thompson-Klein.

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Understanding Interdisciplinarity

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This chapter includes a very brief historical overview, but its main concern is with different forms of interdisciplinarity and the typologies and models that have been advanced in order to represent these. It uses this as the foundation for discussing the experience of interdisciplinarity and the factors influencing interdisciplinary success, highlighting the need for greater understanding of how research teams interact.

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A practical guideline how to tackle interdisciplinarity—A synthesis from a post-graduate group project

• Max Oke Kluger   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9130-8948 1 &
• Gerhard Bartzke 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  7 , Article number:  47 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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• Environmental studies

The comprehensive understanding of increasingly complex global challenges, such as climate change induced sea level rise demands for interdisciplinary research groups. As a result, there is an increasing interest of funding bodies to support interdisciplinary research initiatives. Attempts for interdisciplinary research in such programs often end in research between closely linked disciplines. This is often due to a lack of understanding about how to work interdisciplinarily as a group. Useful practical guidelines have been provided to overcome existing barriers during interdisciplinary integration. Working as an interdisciplinary research group becomes particularly challenging at the doctoral student level. This study reports findings of an interdisciplinary group project in which a group of doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers from various disciplines faced the challenges of reconciling natural, social, and legal aspects of a fictional coastal environmental problem. The research group went through three phases of interdisciplinary integration: (1) comparing disciplines, (2) understanding disciplines, and (3) thinking between disciplines. These phases finally resulted in the development of a practical guideline, including five concepts of interactive integration. A reflective analysis with observations made in existing literature about interdisciplinary integration further supported the feasibility of the practical guideline. It is intended that this practical guideline may help others to leave out pitfalls and to gain a more successful application of interdisciplinarity in their training.

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Introduction.

The large economic, ecological, and demographical challenges caused by globalization led to the transition towards interdisciplinary collaborations between scientific communities, policymakers, and society (Langfeldt et al., 2012 ; Pedersen, 2016 ). Integration of diverse understandings by interdisciplinary collaboration is seen as most comprehensive approach to complex environmental problems (Bromham et al., 2016 ; Ledford, 2015a ; Wagner et al., 2011 ). For example, a paragon for addressing a complex environmental problem was reported for Nova Scotia, Eastern Canada. In this study a group of decision makers from industry, policy, research, communities, as well as, fishery assessed an interdisciplinary way to sustainably harness tidal energy potential (Palmer, 2018 ). In academia, however, discoveries are said to be more likely on the boundaries between disciplines. In this case the latest methods and perspectives can increase knowledge during interdisciplinary research collaborations (Rylance, 2015 ). In contrast, single-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research collaborations increase impact output in highly specialized fields. Therefore, interdisciplinary research collaboration fosters deeper interaction and integration of various disciplinary perspectives (Bergen et al., 2020 ; Gewin, 2014 ; Pykett et al., 2020 ; Sá, 2008 ; Van Noorden, 2015 ).

In order to successfully investigate intricate problems, all involved parties have to communicate and collaborate in an attempt to create a common understanding and to learn from each other’s perspectives. This ideally results in a new perspective that is more than the sum of its components (Brewer, 1999 ; Nissani, 1997 ; Tauginienė et al., 2020 ). As a result, global governance recognizes interdisciplinary research as the best way to address emerging multifaceted problems. Therefore, interdisciplinary programs were strongly encouraged over the last decades (Bozeman and Boardman, 2014 ; Ledford, 2015b ; Pedersen, 2016 ; Rylance, 2015 ), including interdisciplinary research graduate programs. Among others, the US graduate program Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Footnote 1 (IGERT) and the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative Footnote 2 appear to be good showcases for interdisciplinary approaches (Eigenbrode et al., 2007 ; Goring et al., 2014 ; Kennedy et al., 2012 ; Laursen, 2018 ; Pennington et al., 2013 ; Steel et al., 2017 ). Another typical example for an interdisciplinary research training program is the Trust and Communication in a Digitized World program, which examines how trust can be developed and maintained under the conditions of new forms of communication. Footnote 3

To date, a broad range of interdisciplinary graduate education programs have been established to address cross-cutting environmental and sustainability problems (Bruce et al., 2004 ; Campbell, 2005 ; Graybill et al., 2006 ; Juhl et al., 1997 ; McCarthy, 2004 ; Morse et al., 2007 ; Morss et al., 2005 ; Rhoten and Parker, 2004 ; Skates, 2003 ). Nonetheless, from the doctoral student’s perspective the focus on interdisciplinary research may not be trivial, because in order to conclude their work in a time frame that is often narrowly predetermined, doctoral students rarely have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of disciplines outside of their own field (Welch-Devine, 2012 ; Welch-Devine and Campbell, 2010 ). Collaboration efforts mostly come in the form of the exchange of expertise between closely related disciplines, for example in collaborations between geology and biology. In such disciplinary and cross-disciplinary investigations the integration of disciplines is straightforward. However, interdisciplinary collaboration efforts between disciplines not as obviously related to each other, for example social and natural sciences, can introduce misunderstandings because of stereotypes (MacLeod, 2018 ). This can hinder research progress, leads to unnecessary repetition or, in the worst case, can have negative consequences when misunderstood theories are applied in improper contexts (Campbell, 2005 ). In post-graduate training programs, these problems are further complicated as doctoral students are still at the stage of mastering the vocabulary of their own disciplines, while, because of the large time effort, being less interested in working out the meaning from another discipline’s perspective.

Practical guidelines from established literature are commonly the first choice to tackle interdisciplinary integration and research process (Brandt et al., 2013 ; Brown et al., 2015 ; Lang et al., 2012 ). It is also beneficial to reflect on assumptions originating from the different disciplinary perspectives. An efficient communication framework favours respectful attitudes within the research group, resulting in effective cooperation rather than competition. Repko and Szostak ( 2020 ) and Menken and Keestra ( 2016 ) synthesized case studies about interdisciplinarity and provided a good roadmap and interdisciplinary research model how to work interdisciplinarily.

One of the most prominent examples for interdisciplinarity is the effect of climate change on the coastal environment. It comprises of an interacting web of various disciplines covering, for example, atmospheric and oceanographic issues, biological consequences, economic interests, societal concerns, legal commitments, political action as well as ethical implications. Our study aims to extent the existing scientific literature about interdisciplinary integration by focusing on the perspective of post-graduates working in the coastal environment. We reflect on an interdisciplinary group project in which doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers from the interdisciplinary training program INTERCOAST, having different single disciplinary backgrounds, faced challenges of interdisciplinarity in a fictional coastal environmental problem. From our observations about advantages and challenges of interdisciplinarity, a practical guideline was synthesized that could help to educate post-graduates with different backgrounds to face an interdisciplinary problem as a group and how to bypass the pitfalls when it comes to interdisciplinary group work.

Background and composition of the group project

The post-graduate training group Integrated Coastal Zone and Shelf-Sea Research (INTERCOAST) was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft from 2009 to 2018 and was a collaboration between the University of Bremen (Germany) and the University of Waikato (New Zealand). The premier goal of INTERCOAST was to gain an integrated understanding of the coastal environment from oceanographic, sedimentological, biological, socio-economic, and legal perspectives. INTERCOAST consisted of 47 individual research projects, which until now resulted in ca. 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and books. At present, the majority of these publications aimed on disciplinary research questions, whereas only few interdisciplinary studies have been published (Koschinsky et al., 2018 ; Markus et al., 2015 ). Apart from the high level of disciplinary research, the focus of INTERCOAST was also set on interdisciplinary education, which was provided to the post-graduates through workshops and group projects.

From October 2014 to September 2015, 12 doctoral students and two postdoctoral researchers set up an interdisciplinary group project in which a problem related to the coastal environment was investigated to gain a better understanding from different disciplines. The proponents involved in the group project came from different academic disciplines and therefore had considerably different professional expertise about the coastal environment. Research topics that were covered by the proponents of the group project included, but were not limited to, studying iron enrichment in coastal sand deposits (Kulgemeyer et al., 2017 ), various coastal erosion processes (Bartzke et al., 2018 ; Biondo and Bartholomae, 2017 ; Blossier et al., 2017 ; Kluger et al., 2017 , 2019 ; Staudt et al., 2017 ), expansion mechanisms of invasive seaweeds (Bollen et al., 2017 ), the public discourse of coastal protection in Germany (Scheve, 2017 ), and legislative differences between Germany and New Zealand regarding underwater cultural heritage. The proponents of the group consisted of geoscientists, biologists, social scientists, and legal scientists, with geoscientists representing the majority (Table 1 ). The bias in group composition arose from the large quantity of individual research projects that focused on geoscientific topics. The number of group proponents was restricted to 14 as this was the number of doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers who were available during the time period of the group project.

Setup of the group project

Literature reports that three main goals of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research efforts need to be established within their own programmatic routines (Brandt et al., 2013 ; Lang et al., 2012 ). First, a research group forms around a commonly agreed integrated research question. To this end, it is important to identify an aim that does not privilege any involved discipline over another (Campbell, 2005 ). Further, it is necessary to create a common understanding of the different disciplinary concepts, vocabulary, methods, and values. Finally, an interactive communication framework needs to be set up to allow for an efficient sharing of the on-going research within the group. The group project reported in this study lasted for 11 months and was divided into three phases (Table 2 ), which were loosely associated with the three goals of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research described above: (1) phrasing an integrated research question, (2) creating a common understanding, and (3) establishing an interactive communication framework.

During the first 9 months (Phase 1), the postdoctoral researchers organized monthly group meetings. These group meetings consisted of an informal joint lunch break and a subsequent formal seminar. The formal seminar commonly lasted for 2 h and was organized and moderated by the postdoctoral researchers. In the first formal seminar, the group brainstormed about interdisciplinary topics related to the coastal environment in an open discussion. The decision about whether a topic was considered interesting and relevant to the coastal environment was made based on a rather superficial discussion among the group, without taking external expertise or research into account. The selection of relevant topics was not based on democratic decision, for example by means of a vote. A topic was considered interesting and relevant to the coastal environment when at least one proponent of the group supported the suggested topic and nobody expressed an objection. From these topics, the group chose the most interesting and relevant topic and framed a common research problem for further literature research. Wind energy production was selected as common research problem due to its broad applicability to the different disciplines and its prominence in the context of current societal and technical developments related to climate change. The agreement about a common research problem was achieved by an open vote.

The next step consisted of literature research: Each post-graduate had the task to familiarize themselves with one aspect of the common research problem, e.g. noise emission of wind turbines, while focusing on differences between the four disciplines, and prepared a short 10-min presentation about the selected aspect of the common research problem. The group did not monitor how long each individual post-graduate worked on the literature research and the preparation of the presentation. During seminars 2–6, the post-graduates presented their selected aspect of the common research problem to the entire group. Each presentation was followed by a 30-min to 1-h discussion phase during which the proponents of the group discussed the presented aspect in the light of their personal knowledge.

During seminars 7–9, the group phrased a commonly agreed research question. This process started with a discussion about the expected final outcome of the group project. At the end of the seventh seminar, the group agreed on (1) framing one integrated research question related to the common research problem and (2) answering this question interdisciplinarily. The eighth seminar was spent on framing the integrated research question. Several research questions were suggested by proponents of the group. Out of the several research questions, the group established a commonly agreed interdisciplinary research question by means of an open vote, namely:

“How do natural, social, and legal disciplines change in importance and interconnectivity when comparing potential wind farm locations (a) offshore within exclusive economic zone, (b) offshore within territorial sea, and (c) onshore near the coast?”

The ninth seminar was spent by the group to discuss and agree on the strategy to answer the integrated research question. The group decided to answer the integrated research question through phases 2 and 3 as explained below. The group did not monitor the involvement of individual group proponents during the process of phrasing the integrated research question. The authors therefore cannot judge about whether the idea of studying an interdisciplinary problem with a common research question was triggered by a single proponent of the group, or rather developed successively from the entire group’s discussion.

During the 10th month (Phase 2), the proponents of the group were asked to split into four multidisciplinary subgroups and prepared 30-min group presentations, which were supposed to address the research question by focusing on one of the four disciplines (Table 1 ). Each subgroup consisted of one expert from her/his own discipline by training. The other proponents of the subgroups had professional expertise in one of the four disciplines. For example, a social scientist, two geoscientists, and one biologist formed a subgroup with focus on societal aspects in respect to the research question. The social scientist was the expert of this subgroup, moderated the progress within the subgroup, and could help the other proponents of the subgroup in case of misunderstandings related to social scientific issues. The subgroups formed randomly; because of the relatively small number of proponents participating in the group project, they were not always composed of researchers from all four disciplines. The content of the group presentation was divided equally among the proponents of the subgroup to provide the possibility that every proponent would contribute equally to the outcome of their group presentation. The group did not monitor how long each subgroup prepared themselves for their group presentation. The authors acknowledge that an equal contribution is difficult to judge upon due to different personalities of the group proponents. One proponent might spend more effort and time to her/his part of the group presentation than others, or vice versa. The subgroups presented their findings to the entire group during the first day of a 2-day off-campus retreat. Each of the four presentations were followed by a discussion phase. During the discussion phase, the proponents of the group were asked to focus on how the four disciplines addressed the research question in their group presentation. This approach was chosen to create a common understanding of the different disciplinary concepts, vocabulary, methods, and values relevant to the research question. The final outcome of the discussion phase was the common agreement throughout the group to perform a role play as interdisciplinary interactivity.

Phase 3 started with the role play, which was conducted on the second day of the 2-day off-campus retreat. The aim of the role play was to transfer the integrated knowledge gained from the group presentations into an interactive communication framework. The role play included a 2-h planning phase, followed by a 2-h preparation phase, the actual role play (ca. 1 h), and was completed with a 2-h discussion phase. In the planning phase, the proponents of the group nominated different communication scenarios in which the research question could be addressed by all four disciplines. The group decided that the role play would be framed in an open forum in which actors, representing the four disciplines’ interests, would discuss where to construct a future fictional wind farm in Germany. Afterwards, all group proponents slipped into a role and prepared themselves for their part in the role play. One group proponent proposed the role of a moderator. The proponents chose roles based on their individual interests and preferences in order to increase motivation and to maintain a long and interesting discussion among proponents of the group.

The role play took place in a seminar room and the actors were seated in a circle of chairs. The moderator started the role play by introducing him/herself and the reasoning for an open forum. Subsequently, the other actors introduced their role and made a first statement in which they highlighted their role and their role’s opinion, as in the case of the present study, in the process of wind farm construction. Afterwards, a discussion started among the actors. This discussion was only loosely framed by the moderator, giving the actors space to freely interact and communicate within the group and respond to other actors’ opinions. The moderator ensured that all actors had the chance to contribute equally to the role play. Although it has to be acknowledged that the actors contributed differently due to their different personalities and role. After the role play, the proponents of the group discussed the outcome of the role play with respect to importance of the different actors and their interconnectivity between actors.

During two 6-h seminars, which took place in the month after the 2-day off-campus retreat, the group went through a phase of intense reflection in order to answer the research question stated above. The first seminar was spent on finding a way to visualize the involvement and role of each discipline in regard to the three locations for wind farm construction. The group decided to develop a conceptual model. In the second seminar, the group created the conceptual model. All group proponents took part in the seminars, but the group did not monitor whether or not all proponents contributed equally to the final conceptual model.

Phrasing an integrated research question—Phase 1

The integrated research question was phrased during group meetings, which took place in monthly intervals during the first 9 months of the project (Table 2 ). Informal joint lunch breaks formed the first platform of the group meetings. It was observed that doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers exchanged private and professional topics during the lunch breaks without paying much attention to the disciplinary perspectives. Proponents had the time and space to explain misunderstandings that arose from the conversations throughout the group. It was observed that the group dynamics changed over time. During the first lunch breaks, proponents were mostly interested in private topics or in professional topics related to their own disciplines. At the end of the 9 months period of phase 1, it was observed that the proportion of professional topics that were not related to their own disciplines increased. This shows that the informal lunch breaks nurtured interdisciplinary emphasis of the group.

Formal seminars formed the second platform of the group meetings. During the first formal seminar, the proponents brainstormed about topics relevant to the coastal environment and created a mind map. For the present study, this mind map was visualized as perspective map in Fig. 1 . Relevant topics to the coastal environment considered by the group included, but were not limited to, wind energy production, food production, tourism and residential areas, industry and infrastructure, waste water disposal and dredging, marine resources, and underwater cultural heritage. The proponents divided the coastal environment into three areas of interest, namely (1) onshore near the coast, (2) offshore within territorial sea (up to 12 nautical miles offshore), and (3) offshore within exclusive economic zone (up to 200 nautical miles offshore). After an intense discussion and numerous refinements, the research group decided that the challenge of increasing the proportion of wind energy production within the next decades would probably be the most relevant topic for interdisciplinary research in the three areas of interest today (Deutscher Bundestag, 2014 ; Ender, 2017 ). Therefore, the commonly agreed research problem was framed on understanding the complex roles and interactions between disciplines when searching for an appropriate coastal wind farm location. During phase 1 it was observed that for the proponents it was of particular importance to be able to identify themselves with the chosen research problem with respect to their disciplinary background and to share their expertise with the group.

The dark-shaded area highlights the three different locations for wind farms, which are the commonly agreed research areas of the interdisciplinary group work. The three areas include a – c offshore within exclusive economic zone (EEZ), offshore within territorial sea (TS), and onshore near the coast. Alternative suggestions for research areas include d farming, e tourism and residential areas, f industry and infrastructure, g waste water disposal, dredging, and dumping, h scientific surveys, i underwater cultural heritage, j marine resources, and k fishery.

The post-graduates presented their literature research about one aspect of the common research problem (seminars 2–6). At this stage, the definition of a specific research question was not the premier goal of the group. The group was more concerned with the establishment of a common understanding of interdisciplinary aspects within the research problem. It was observed that the aspects chosen by the proponents still remained in their own disciplines during this phase. For example, biologists chose to read literature about bird collision within offshore wind farms or whether or not noise emission would affect the behaviour of marine mammals. A geoscientist was more concerned about the possible difficulties of predicting the sediment stability around wind turbines located in a highly dynamic environment. A social scientist read literature about public perception of onshore and offshore wind farms, whereas a legal scientist studied the differences of regulatory frameworks of wind farm constructions between the different areas of interest. In the following seminars, the proponents seemed to become more familiar with the other disciplines in the group and, but more importantly, appeared to develop an interest to understand the other disciplines’ arguments and concerns. We believe that this transformation towards interdisciplinary group work was mainly initialized by the exchange of personal and professional opinions during the informal lunch breaks.

The phrasing of a commonly agreed research question (seminars 7–9) turned out to be a long-lasting process. Proponents discussed about topics such as the usefulness of phrasing a single integrated research question or the general thematic focus of the question. The hierarchy of words were a matter of discussion too. Proponents argued about, for example, whether or not the order of disciplines as phrased in the research question (“How do natural, social, and legal disciplines […]”) would refer to some kind of a hierarchical order. It was observed that proponents with social and legal professional backgrounds were more actively focusing on levelling the hierarchy of disciplines than the natural scientists. This was probably because social and legal disciplines formed the minority within the group, felt underrepresented, and attempted to strengthen their position.

During the process of phrasing a common research question, the group decided to name the group project InterWind , being a word combination of interdisciplinarity and wind farms. The title of the group project was initially suggested by one of the doctoral students and was later commonly accepted by the entire group. The authors believe that establishing both a common research question and a project name was the most important step for the proponents to identify themselves with the research project. This was especially important because the doctoral students performed the group project also during the last year of their Ph.D. and were therefore preoccupied with other topics.

Creating a common understanding—Phase 2

Multidisciplinary group work was used as a tool to improve the understanding of the different disciplines with respect to the common research question and to encourage interdisciplinary thinking. The proponents of the subgroup approached interdisciplinary thinking from different perspectives. On the one hand, the expert functioned as mentor and could observe and comprehend the other proponents’ struggles and difficulties when facing an unrelated discipline. On the other hand, the proponents of unrelated disciplines enjoyed the immediate benefit from explanations and advices provided by the expert in cases of misunderstandings. The exchange of these two different perspectives within subgroup encouraged interdisciplinary thinking.

The multidisciplinary subgroups presented their findings to the entire group during the first day of the off-campus retreat. In the presentations, the subgroups focused not only on their acquired knowledge but also on their impressions and personal experiences during the multidisciplinary group work. For example, one of the multidisciplinary group presentations focused on how the procedure of wind turbine construction differs throughout the three areas of interest. Among other aspects, it was presented that the type of foundation may differ from a surface foundation in the onshore environment to monopile and tripod foundations in the offshore environment. For the present study, this example was visualized in the lower panel of Fig. 2 . The differences between these three types of foundations were presented from legal, geoscientific, and biological perspectives. The subgroup did not find any societal topics related to the type of foundations. Another subgroup presented the impact of wind turbines on bird migration. The proponents showed that in the public perception, collision with wind turbines as a consequence of bird migration is considered a major obstacle for the construction of wind turbines (Devlin, 2005 ). However, recent systematic studies showed that birds tend to avoid the wind turbines and that the thread for collision is highly overestimated in the public (Hüppop et al., 2006 ).

It represents the different weighting (circle size) and interactivity (arrow width) of the four disciplines in the context of wind farm construction between a offshore within the executive economic zone, b offshore within the territorial sea, and c onshore near the coast.

These discrepancies between disciplines observed in the group presentations were vividly discussed by the group. The group decided to class the discrepancies with respect to the three areas of interest (onshore near the coast, offshore within territorial sea, and offshore within exclusive economic zone). In the following, the authors describe the main findings the group made about the differences between disciplines with respect to the three areas of interest.

In the onshore environment near the coast, the group considered geological and biological environmental constraints lower in importance compared with the offshore areas. The main reason for this consideration was that, because onshore wind turbines are commonly built in anthropogenically modified areas, they commonly require simpler ground investigations and have a limited effect on the ecosystem. In contrast, the group considered the impact on society, represented by for example land owners and tourists, as comparatively large (Wolsink, 2007 ). The group explained this conclusion with the high visibility of onshore wind turbines. In areas where the available space is already limited, people may object the construction of wind turbines despite the numerous positive effects on environment and economy.

In the offshore environment, the group discussed that various geological aspects, such as the presence of strong wind and hydrodynamic loads, the sediment properties of the subsoil, and the wind turbine design, have to be accounted for (BSH, 2014 ). Biological aspects include the possible effects of wind turbines on the marine ecosystem (Desholm and Kahlert, 2005 ; Elmer et al., 2007 ) as well as long-term climate variability due to reduction in carbon dioxide emission (Kempton et al., 2007 ). The group considered societal aspects high within the territorial sea as the tourism industry and public acceptance may be influenced in cases where offshore wind farms are visible from the coast (Devine-Wright and Howes, 2010 ; Gee, 2010 ). In the exclusive economic zone, societal impacts are mainly limited to shipping industry and fishery (Berkenhagen et al., 2010 ). Due to the large distance from the coast, offshore wind farms are generally more accepted by coastal communities and negative effects on coastal tourism are low (Hübner and Pohl, 2016 ; Hübner and Pohl, 2014 ). Therefore, the group considered societal aspects smaller in the exclusive economic zone compared with the territorial sea. The legal aspects, such as the regulatory framework for wind farm construction in Germany (BSH, 2014 ) was considered as equally important throughout the three areas of interest.

The group further focused on comparing the interactions between disciplines within the three areas of interest. The group considered that the society emphasizes with fauna and flora more easily than it does with practical aspects of geology, such as geotechnical engineering efforts when searching for a wind farm location. Therefore, the group weighted interactions between society and biology higher than those between society and geology. The highest interactions were considered to exist between society and biology when wind farms form part of the landscape (onshore and offshore within territorial waters) (Gee, 2010 ).

Establishing an interactive communicative framework—Phase 3

In the third phase, the group performed a role play in order to transfer the integrated knowledge gained from the group presentations into an interactive communication framework (second day of the off-campus retreat). The role play was framed in an open forum in which stakeholders from one of the four disciplines discussed where to construct a future fictional wind farm. The roles’ opinions reflected various aspects of the decision process of wind farm constructions and encompassed, among others, a local resident, a wind farm operator, an eco-activist, a federal politician, and an employee working for a federal maritime agency. During the role play the proponents had to emphasize with their new role and built a line of argumentation based on their role’s best interest. As the communication proceeded, the actors emphasized with the perspectives of the other roles, made compromises, and finally decided on a wind farm location every actor could agree upon.

The group went through intense discussions and reflections about the group presentations and the role play in order to find and agree on an integrated answer to the common research question. The group agreed that the complex roles of disciplines and interactions between disciplines with respect to the three areas of interest could be best synthesized by means of a conceptual model (Fig. 2 ). The group decided that the conceptual model should be divided into the three areas of interest. Each subdivision should consist of four geometrical shapes each of them representing one of the four disciplines. The size of geometrical shapes should reflect the group’s decision about the dominance of individual disciplines over other disciplines in the area of interest, respectively. Arrows of different widths would connect the four geometrical shapes in order to visualize a degree of interaction.

The group agreed that the legal framework provides the basis of interactions between the other three disciplines. Therefore, the law discipline was put into the centre (or heart) of the conceptual model. A triangular shape was chosen for the law discipline, symbolizing a cogwheel that drives the interactions and communications between the other disciplines. The other three disciplines were symbolized as circular shapes that surround the law triangle. The circular shape was chosen to be different from the law triangle, but without taking any other meaning into account. Note that the relative position and colour of circles do not indicate any hierarchical order of the disciplines but were chosen solely for a better illustration of the conceptual model.

The relative weighting of the disciplines and their degree of interaction were subject to long discussions throughout the research group. The final conceptual model (Fig. 2 ) was the result of various refinements that were made by all group proponents of all four disciplines and may therefore be considered as a truly interdisciplinary outcome. The conceptual model could indicate weaknesses in current practices and involvements of disciplines regarding wind farm constructions.

Practical guideline for interdisciplinary research process

All observations made during the interdisciplinary group project were synthesized into a practical guideline (Fig. 3 ) that may help other research groups composed of various disciplines to engage in an interdisciplinary problem. The practical guideline is conceptualized as a sequence of three phases of interdisciplinary integration: (1) comparing disciplines, (2) understanding disciplines, and (3) thinking between disciplines. The basic concept of these three phases follows the suggestions made by Lang et al. ( 2012 ) for transdisciplinary research process, who divided integrative research process into (1) problem framing and team building based on a societal and/or scientific problem, (2) co-creation of solution-oriented transferable knowledge, and (3) (re-)integration and application of created knowledge in both societal and scientific practice. The conceptual model of Lang et al. ( 2012 ) has many similarities to other models in the literature (Carew and Wickson, 2010 ; Jahn, 2008 ; Krütli et al., 2010 ; Talwar et al., 2011 ) and was adopted by numerous researchers (Brandt et al., 2013 ; Mauser et al., 2013 ; Miller et al., 2014 ).

Geometric objects (triangle, square, circle, and diamond) indicate different disciplines. The term ‘dark cloud’ refers to an unresolved challenge that has to be encountered interdisciplinarily.

The conceptual model synthesized in the present study (Fig. 3 ) starts with phase 1: Comparing disciplines. Doctoral students and/or postdoctoral researchers, originally having professional backgrounds in a single discipline, form a group and collect ideas about a common research problem through group meetings. A commonly agreed research problem is framed through iterative refinements throughout the group proponents, before the group decides upon an integrated research question. In phase 1, proponents may face problems and misunderstandings when trying to emphasize with the other disciplines. The limited understanding about the other disciplines is illustrated in the conceptual model by a dark cloud , which every proponent of the group must enter in order to find an integrated research question (as symbolized in the left part of Fig. 3 ). Group meetings that combine informal lunch breaks with subsequent formal seminars were found to be a successful tool for helping proponents to compare disciplines, to collect ideas for a research problem, which does not privilege one discipline over another, and to finally reach a common agreement on an integrated research question.

Lang et al. ( 2012 ) emphasized that the individual phases of transdisciplinary research process are not likely to be a linear process but often have to be performed in an iterative manner in order to reflect about transdisciplinarity. Based on the methodological approach of the present study, the three phases of the practical guideline followed a predefined chronological sequence, without allowing any iterative adjustments between phases. However, within phase 1 an iteration step was included that allowed a refinement of the common research problem.

In phase 2, the group establishes a common understanding of the different disciplines through multidisciplinary group work. The different perspectives of expert and non-experts during multidisciplinary group work nurtures empathy of proponents when dealing with unknown disciplines. The proponents familiarize themselves with an unknown discipline during their own literature review, can discuss and change perspectives during the preparation of multidisciplinary group presentations, and can finally benefit from listening to and discussing about other presentations being held in an atmosphere not related to normal work environment, for example during an off-campus retreat. During this process, each proponent enters the dark cloud of disciplines, previously considered to contain research fields largely unrelated to each other, to steadily form an interconnected transdisciplinary framework (as symbolized on the left side of Fig. 3 ).

In phase 3, the group discusses and reflects about the findings with respect to the integrated research question through an interactivity, for example a role play. The answer to the integrated research question should reflect the ability of the group for successful interdisciplinary work. An abstraction, for example using a conceptual model, could be a helpful way to reduce complexity and ensure an answer that can be accepted by the entire group. During this process, the proponents finally start to understand the integrated problem as multidimensional complex of disciplinary interrelations and learn to think at the interfaces between disciplines (as symbolized on the left side of Fig. 3 ).

Our practical guideline for approaching an interdisciplinary problem may be considered as an extension to the conceptual model for transdisciplinary research process of Lang et al. ( 2012 ). It largely follows the three proposed phases of research process but also incorporates five new concepts, namely group meetings, multidisciplinary group work, an off-campus retreat, an interactivity, and an abstraction of interdisciplinarity that enable the research group to approach an integrated problem interdisciplinarily.

Our practical guideline is endorsed by the five principles of interdisciplinary collaboration presented by Brown et al. ( 2015 ). Here the researchers initially undergone through a phase of “forging a shared mission”, which provided an overall goal of collaboration. The shared mission needed to be formulated broad enough to incorporate meaningful roles for all disciplinary researchers involved. This principle was also observed by us during the process of phrasing an integrated research question in phase 1 as shown in our practical guideline. Brown et al. ( 2015 ) further described the usefulness of “T-shaped researchers” (Hansen and Von Oetinger, 2001 ). Such researchers are reported as experts in their own discipline, but are also capable of looking beyond their scope. In our practical guideline, the development of T-shaped researchers was nurtured through the multidisciplinary group work in phase 2 and the interactivity in phase 3. By this, the students have transferred into T-shaped researchers. In particular, by learning that an active engagement with other disciplines is important, and hence, understanding and appreciating their norms, theories, approaches, evolved as an important step towards interdisciplinary collaboration.

We believe that our practical guideline will help others facing similar challenges of interdisciplinarity and we are looking forward to future initiatives that incorporate the practical guideline into their interdisciplinary education. Nonetheless, we think that our presented guideline describes a practical approach to transform a disciplinary thinking group to an interdisciplinary working team efficiently.

Advantages and challenges of interdisciplinary group work

The interdisciplinary group project revealed a number of issues that are common among other interdisplinary and transdisciplinary working groups. The group project was biased in terms of disciplinary diversity. The majority of proponents had a background in natural sciences, while only few proponents came from social and legal science disciplines. The bias between disciplines arose from the relatively small number of participants, which possibly affected the weighting of one discipline over another during the three phases of interdisciplinary integration, especially during the multidisciplinary group work. Asymmetry in interdisciplinary integration was also mentioned by Viseu ( 2015 ). She pointed out that social sciences are often brought into a research team after the project already have been started. Moreover, social scientists sadly form the minority, lack in independence and funding, which eventually leads to a hampering in knowledge production. For future interdisciplinary group projects, we recommend that all disciplines are equally involved during all phases of interdisciplinary collaboration. This will avoid problems related to an unequal distribution and weighing of disciplines within the research group.

Communication problems on topics of mutual interest is famously and anecdotally a common problem in interdisciplinary collaboration. While the general challenges as well as the benefits have long been recognized (Brewer, 1999 ; Nissani, 1997 ), we would like to discuss some of the struggles that came with this project with concrete examples. The problems we encountered fall broadly into three categories: language (definition of terms, implicit assumptions), form (writing style, structure, organization), and prejudice (overcoming of stereotypes).

Language-based problems primarily appeared where certain words have different definitions in colloquial language and the technical terminology of one of the scientific disciplines. While this was rarely the cause for complete misunderstandings, it often led to lengthy discussions about the phrasing in written form. An example is the word coast : In casual conversation, it is more or less synonymous with beach or shore and can be understood as where the land meets the sea ; this would also be the definition most people would use in an interview for a sociological study. Geological definitions of the coastal system include significant portions of the continental shelf up to the shelf break, as well as inland areas that are still affected by coastal processes, for instance by dune formation. For legal purposes, distinctions are made between land, territorial waters, exclusive economic zone, and international waters. These kinds of discussions are an important part of the interdisciplinary process and a sufficient amount of time should be set aside for them.

Formal problems arose when decisions had to be made about content and order of information, both in the oral presentations and during the preparation of the present paper. Natural sciences make extensive use of graphical forms of presentation in the form of diagrams and sketches—a rarity at best in legal sciences, which in turn make good use of footnotes for clarification and additional information. Differing viewpoints exist about the need to quantify data or the appropriateness of qualitative descriptions. The order in which information is presented greatly influences the focus set for the audience. The audience itself is also a decisive factor; especially a mixed audience of experts from different fields has very heterogeneous expectations that can hardly be satisfied all at once. For the present paper, decisions were made regarding style, structure, significance of findings, and even writing conventions like first vs. third person and formal tone.

Prejudice might come as an unexpected challenge. Post-graduates of their various disciplines have been trained in the environment of a certain academic culture that they tend to identify with. This includes to distinguish their own discipline from others, often in the form of humorous observations about their aims, practices and usage as well as the perceived ranking of the respective disciplines on a scale of scientific value (with their own discipline of course close to the top).

Later in their career, when post-graduates become experts, they find themselves in a position where they need to justify their research in competitive environments, including the frequent search for future funding or constant rate of publications in a high-impact journal. By necessity, they learn to present their work in a way that highlights its values. Although few scientists will consciously think lesser of their colleagues, some may fall into the trap of unconsciously evaluate other disciplines less favourably than their own. From the observations made in the present study, the reason for bringing disciplines together is not to make scholars experts on all things (a rather hopeful goal) but to enable them to collaborate on a shared and integrated question. Apart from knowledge exchange itself and learning from each other, it is important that they trust each other’s expertise. Perhaps the most important thing to highlight is that post-graduates need to learn how to engage with other disciplines. This line of thinking is further supported by unfamiliarity with the tools and premises of said disciplines and is especially present in interdisciplinary environments where hard and soft sciences are part of the same group project. In this way, interdisciplinary projects can provide unique benefits, both to the work itself by enabling a greater inclusiveness and the ability to recognize more facets of a problem, as well as to the persons involved by broadening their horizon and facilitating scientific exchange.

One success of group projects, such as the one of the present study, is that it provided time and space for such conversations and argumentations. Without working through a structured process on this case study, the opportunity would have never arisen to learn about important differences between disciplinary structures and methods. Nor would most proponents of the group have a chance to examine their own assumptions about scientific vocabulary and consider alternate meanings of basic terms. These encounters and moments were only made possible through the group project, which proved its value in training early career scientists to work cooperatively across disciplinary boundaries. Overcoming these problems requires the willingness to compromise. The potential downside can be a loss of precision in some aspects of the work, which has to be pointed out and balanced by references to specialized literature.

The present study reports findings about an interdisciplinary group project in which doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers with natural, social, and legal professional backgrounds faced challenges of interdisciplinarity. Results of the group project include in a practical guideline, which extends existing conceptual models about transdisciplinary research process by introducing a concept that helps research groups to approach an integrated problem interdisciplinarily. In synthesis, the group went through three phases of interdisciplinary integration, namely (1) comparing disciplines, (2) understanding disciplines, and (3) thinking between disciplines.

A group of doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers collect ideas about a common research problem through group meetings and frame an integrated research question by iterative refinements. Group meetings combine informal lunch breaks with subsequent formal seminars and were found to be an effective too for helping proponents to initiate interdisciplinary thinking.

A common understanding about the different disciplines’ perspectives is established through multidisciplinary group work of experts and non-experts. The different perspectives of expert and non-experts during multidisciplinary group work nurtures empathy of proponents when dealing with unknown disciplines. Group presentations and subsequent discussions in an atmosphere not related to normal work environment help to steadily form an interconnected transdisciplinary framework between disciplines.

The group discusses and reflects about the findings with respect to the integrated research question through an interactivity, for example a role play. The answer to the integrated research question should reflect the ability of the group for successful interdisciplinary work. An abstraction, for example using a conceptual model, could be a helpful way to reduce complexity and ensure an answer that can be excepted by the entire group.

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This research was funded by the DFG Research Center MARUM of the University of Bremen, Germany, through INTERCOAST (Reference number: 112807311) and the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. We also acknowledge K. Huhn who encouraged this project. We thank T. Kulgemeyer who contributed to the discussion of this manuscript and for providing comments on the final manuscript. We acknowledge B. Blossier, F. Boxberg, C. Gawrych, S. Gustafson, M. Preu, and F. Staudt who commented on an early version of this manuscript. We thank all proponents who contributed to the group project InterWind.

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Kluger, M.O., Bartzke, G. A practical guideline how to tackle interdisciplinarity—A synthesis from a post-graduate group project. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 7 , 47 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00540-9

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Defining Interdisciplinary Research: Conclusions from a Critical Review of the Literature

To summarize findings from a systematic exploration of existing literature and views regarding interdisciplinarity, to discuss themes and components of such work, and to propose a theoretically based definition of interdisciplinary research.

Data Sources/Study Setting

Two major data sources were used: interviews with researchers from various disciplines, and a systematic review of the education, business, and health care literature from January 1980 through January 2005.

Study Design

Systematic review of literature, one-on-one interviews, field test (survey).

Data Collection/Extraction Methods

We reviewed 14 definitions of interdisciplinarity, the characteristics of 42 interdisciplinary research publications from multiple fields of study, and 14 researcher interviews to arrive at a preliminary definition of interdisciplinary research. That definition was then field tested by 12 individuals with interdisciplinary research experience, and their responses incorporated into the definition of interdisciplinary research proposed in this paper.

Principal Findings

Three key definitional characteristics were identified: the qualitative mode of research (and its theoretical underpinnings), existence of a continuum of synthesis among disciplines, and the desired outcome of the interdisciplinary research.

Existing literature from several fields did not provide a definition for interdisciplinary research of sufficient specificity to facilitate activities such as identification of the competencies, structure, and resources needed for health care and health policy research. This analysis led to the proposed definition, which is designed to aid decision makers in funding agencies/program committees and researchers to identify and take full advantage the interdisciplinary approach, and to serve as a basis for competency-based formalized training to provide researchers with interdisciplinary skills.

As scientific knowledge in a wide range of disciplines has advanced, scholars have become increasingly aware of the need to link disciplinary fields to more fully answer critical questions, or to facilitate application of knowledge in a specific area. For example, the discovery that tobacco use was associated with high rates of lung disease was not sufficient to lead to smoking cessation; the addition of research on risk assessment, motivation, and reasoned action were all important in designing programs that have fostered the current lower rates of tobacco use. This recognition has stimulated a steadily growing interest within the scientific community in developing new knowledge through research that combines the skills and perspectives of multiple disciplines. This may be in part a parallel of the wider societal interest in holistic perspectives that do not reduce human experience to a single dimension of descriptors, and to awareness that a number of extremely important and productive fields of study are themselves interdisciplinary: biochemistry, biophysics, social psychology, geophysics, informatics, and others. Recent publications in Health Services Research exemplify the complexities involved in health services research and the need for an interdisciplinary approach ( Glied et al. 2005 ; Gonzales et al. 2005 ; Hunt, Gaba, and Lavizzo-Mourey 2005 ; McLaughlin 2005 ).

A number of research centers funded over the past decade by the National Institutes of Health (NIH; e.g., Center for Evidence-Based Practice in the Underserved; Center on Population, Gender, and Social Inequality; Interdepartmental Neuroscience Center) are labeled as interdisciplinary and have involved scholars from multiple disciplines in productive research endeavors. NIH has identified interdisciplinarity as an essential contributor to needed knowledge and made it an explicit priority in its recent Roadmap. The Roadmap, a new strategic plan for future NIH funding ( http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/interdisciplinary/index.asp ), describes interdisciplinary research as that which:

• integrates the analytical strengths of two or more often disparate scientific disciplines to solve a given biological problem. For instance, behavioral scientists, molecular biologists, and mathematicians might combine their research tools, approaches, and technologies to more powerfully solve the puzzles of complex health problems such as pain and obesity. By engaging seemingly unrelated disciplines, traditional gaps in terminology, approach, and methodology might be gradually eliminated . With roadblocks to potential collaboration removed, a true meeting of minds can take place: one that broadens the scope of investigation into biomedical problems, yields fresh and possibly unexpected insights, and may even give birth to new hybrid disciplines that are more analytically sophisticated (emphasis added).

While descriptive statements and lists of disciplines may be of value in informing observers about interdisciplinary research, they lack the precision needed to determine whether a given research effort is truly interdisciplinary, or simply happens to have been conducted by individuals with different credentials or employed in different academic departments.

Although scholars in the health sciences have developed research teams that often include members of multiple disciplines, the nature of interdisciplinarity and the concept of interdisciplinary research varies across disciplines, as do expectations and values of participants regarding the process of interdisciplinary research. A more precise definition of interdisciplinary research is needed so that funding agencies and researchers themselves can identify the competencies and resources necessary for successful interdisciplinary contributions to science. Such knowledge would be of great use in guiding both research design and funding decisions.

One endeavor to support and enhance interdisciplinary research within the Roadmap is the funding of 21 exploratory centers for interdisciplinary research ( http://nihroadmap.nih.gov/interdisciplinary/exploratorycenters/ ). The authors are associated with one of these interdisciplinary centers, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (CIRAR, http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/nursing/CIRAR/ ). Currently our research collaborative team includes persons from the disciplines of epidemiology, microbiology, pediatrics, infectious disease, nursing, economics, health policy, education, biostatistics, economics, informatics, public health, and more. Before joining CIRAR, these individuals had been engaged in research programs that range from bench science at the cellular level, clinical trials in hospitals and communities, cost–benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis and community-based participatory research. All of the members of CIRAR have engaged in collaborative work in the past, using their own sense of good scholarship to guide the process. Like many researchers, their experience with the “practice” of interdisciplinarity is a valuable resource, but in order to realize the full potential of this approach to research there must be an effort made to pool these resources across multiple fields.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize findings from a systematic exploration of existing literature and views regarding interdisciplinarity, to discuss themes and components of such work, and to propose a theoretically based definition of interdisciplinary research. Before the review of literature, the authors held interviews with individuals engaged in successful research involving multiple disciplines. A preliminary definition based on the interviews and subsequent literature review was composed. The definition was then field tested and modified to arrive at our proposed definition of interdisciplinary research. The aim of the project was to propose a definition that could then be used, among other applications, to identify the competencies needed for successful interdisciplinary research practice from which curriculum to teach interdisciplinarity could be developed.

This analysis of interdisciplinary research used two primary data sources: interviews with experienced researchers and a systematic literature review. The first data source was a series of one-on-one systematic interviews conducted by the CIRAR director with the 14 researchers (physicians, nurses, and researchers from public health and the social sciences) who were core members of the CIRAR interdisciplinary research center. These individuals had been selected for Center membership because they were experienced and successful researchers whose work bridged several disciplines. In these interviews, respondents were queried regarding their own work styles and the specific characteristics, which they sought in others in order to achieve successful interdisciplinary collaborations. The interviewer asked 10 questions on the researcher's attitudes and behaviors regarding their own professional lives and their disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaborations. The responses were categorized and summarized descriptively.

The larger data source was a systematic literature review conducted in three bodies of academic literature: education, business, and health care. Each was searched by one or more collaborators with expertise in the respective field. Inclusive dates for searches were January 1980 through January 2005 (25 years); only English language books and peer-review journal articles were included, and search terms used were “interdisciplinarity,” “interdisciplinary research,” and “collaborative research.” Databases searched included ProQuest ABI/INFORM Global ( http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb ), which includes business, economics, and management literature; PubMed ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?DB =pubmed ) for biomedical literature; and the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database: (Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education) for educational literature. In addition to the peer-reviewed search engines, a review of unindexed reports and publications from health-related foundations with a known interest in interdisciplinary efforts was added. In the articles reviewed, factors identified as important to the success of interdisciplinary research were categorized as environmental/institutional factors, team factors, or individual characteristics of team members.

The initial search produced over 500 sources related in some way to interdisciplinarity. Articles or books were then evaluated for their content; only sources that addressed some aspect of the interdisciplinary research process and theory were included. Many of the sources excluded were examples of interdisciplinary research studies that did not include an analysis of the interdisciplinary process itself or any discussion of definitions.

Based on information synthesized from the literature review and the researcher interviews, a preliminary definition of interdisciplinary research was composed. As a final step, this preliminary definition was field tested by a set of researchers experienced in interdisciplinary work. Twelve individuals (four senior researchers with extensive interdisciplinary experience from academic institutions in three other states and eight members of CIRAR) were asked to review both the NIH definition of interdisciplinary research and the preliminary definition proposed by selected members of the CIRAR Interdisciplinary Working Group based upon a review of the literature. No one involved in the creation of the draft definition participated in the field test. Each individual completed a written survey that included both the NIH definition and draft definition. They were asked to identify critical elements of the draft definition, delete elements that did not belong in the definition, suggest additions from the NIH definition, and make other suggestions related to additions or refinements.

Researcher Interviews

Themes that emerged regarding successful interdisciplinary work included respect for the scientific process and importance of collaborative research; identifying interesting topics; management, focus, and editing of work; and the ability to make mistakes gracefully. The researchers interviewed were seasoned professionals with a history of successful interdisciplinary research; their attitudes and behaviors toward scholarly work and collaboration was greatly informative as successful “case studies.” They identified 27 personal characteristics that they valued in collaborators and 13 ways in which interdisciplinary research could contribute to their work. Although the data from these interviews helped in getting a sense for how senior interdisciplinary researchers think, no definitional specifics emerged from these interviews.

Literature Search

While >500 articles or books related to the general theme of interdisciplinarity were initially identified, only 42 articles or books were specific to the topic of interdisciplinary research (as opposed to examples of interdisciplinary research). The majority of these papers (30/42, 71.4 percent) were from the health and social sciences literature and had a mean of 2.8 ( Table 1 ) ( Allen 1992 ; Barnes, Pashby, and Gibbons 2002 ; Beersma et al. 2003 ; Aram 2004 ; Cummings 2004 ; Hobman, Bordia, and Gallois 2004 ; Guimera et al. 2005 ) authors/article, 59.5 percent of whom were from the social sciences. Of these papers, one-third (14, 33.3 percent) were empirically based research about interdisciplinarity ( Allen 1992 ; White 1999 ; Kone et al. 2000 ; Sullivan et al. 2001 ; Barnes, Pashby, and Gibbons 2002 ; Lattuca 2002 ; Beersma et al. 2003 ; Morillo, Bordons, and Gomez 2003 ; Schulz, Israel, and Lantz 2003 ; Aram 2004 ; Cummings 2004 ; Hobman, Bordia, and Gallois 2004 ; Senior and Swailes 2004 ; Guimera et al. 2005 ); the others were general discussions ( Woollcott 1979 ; Jacobs and Borland 1986 ; Bloedon and Stokes 1994 ; Nissani 1997 ; Israel et al. 1998 ; Lindauer 1998 ; Northridge et al. 2000 ; Stead and Harrington 2000 ; Anderson 2001 ; Aagaard-Hansen and Ouma 2002 ; Board of Health Care Services 2003 ; Frost and Jean 2003 ; Nyden 2003 ; Jacobson, Butterill, and Goering 2004 ; Slatin et al. 2004 ), cases studies ( Dodgson 1992 ; Rosenfield 1992 ; Bisby 2001 ; Higgins, Maciak, and Metzler 2001 ; Lantz et al. 2001 ; Lattuca 2001 ; Cheadle et al. 2002 ; Austin 2003 ; Baba et al. 2004 ; Daniels 2004 ; Tennenhouse 2004 ) and one literature review ( Berkowitz 2000 ). Eleven (26.1 percent) of the papers included an explicit definition of interdisciplinarity and only five papers (11.9 percent) described or cited any type of conceptual framework or theoretical underpinnings for their approach to interdisciplinary research (three distinct typologies, see Table 2 ).

Reviewed Articles from the Health Care, Business, and Education Literatures ( n =42)

Typologies of Interdisciplinary Research

Authors described multiple factors essential to the success of interdisciplinary work. In these papers, 54.8 percent discussed environmental/institutional factors such as an explicit institutional commitment to interdisciplinarity and sufficient resources; 61.9 percent mentioned team factors such as communication, leadership, and trust; and 19.0 percent described individual characteristics of team members such as commitment, flexibility, and being agreeable to work with.

Divergent Paradigms of Interdisciplinary Research

Divergent paradigms of inquiry were reflected in the physical and social sciences as contrasted with the humanities, with associated differences in methodologies and premises. The physical and social sciences employed a positivist or postpositivist mode of inquiry in which an appreciable reality exists and is objectively (although sometimes imperfectly) knowable. The methodologies of the physical and social sciences are primarily hypothesis driven and use experimentation and manipulation to achieve objectivism. The typology proposed by Rosenfield (1992) ( Table 2 ), consistent with the hypothesis-driven approach employed by these fields in which the starting point for all collaborations is a common problem or question, was most cited by references from the social, health, and physical sciences. The humanities employed a critical theory or constructivist mode of inquiry in which reality is experientially based, historically shaped, and its understanding is only relative in nature. The methodologies are not hypothesis driven and the approach emphasizes subjectivism and the inherent interaction between the investigator and the subject, as defined by Guba and Lincoln (1994) . The finding that qualitative modes were a key feature suggests that the quantitative approach is more of a technique than a way of knowing. Explicated assumptions and values are part of qualitative inquiry, and perhaps better set the stage for dialogue.

Key Definitional Components

Of the 42 references identified, 14 contained some language describing key definitional components of interdisciplinary research. The components offered were a synthesis of both the author's personal experience and his or her knowledge of the interdisciplinary literature. A single exception ( Morillo, Bordons, and Gomez 2003 ) was an attempt to empirically define interdisciplinarity based on bibliometric methods in which the degree of interdisciplinarity of a given field of study was determined by the number of subject categories assigned to disciplinary journals by the various citation indices.

The key definitional components from the literature review were:

• Qualitatively different modes of interdisciplinary research There were three predominant typologies of interdisciplinary research cited in the literature. Distinctions were often made based upon where along the continuum of synthesis the various disciplines fell. Different points along the continuum represent qualitatively different forms of collaboration. These typologies are categorized in Table 2 .
• Existence of a continuum of collaboration . In all sources there was common acknowledgement of a continuum with respect to interdisciplinary research and the degree of synthesis involved in the process and achieved in the outcome. One example describing the process: “interaction may range from simple communication of ideas to the mutual integration of organizing concepts, methodology, procedures, epistemology, terminology, data, and organization of research and education in a fairly large field.”( OECD [1998] quoted in Morillo, Bordons, and Gomez [2003 , p. 1237]).
• Definition and fidelity to disciplinarity . Several references defined the disciplinarity of interacting members by content (e.g., “thought domains” [ Aram 2004 ], “specific body of teachable knowledge” [ Woollcott 1979 ], “conceptual specificity” [ Robertson, Martin, and Singer 2003 ], or “journal sets” [ Morillo, Bordons, and Gomez 2003 ]) or by social factors (e.g.,“isolated domains of human experience possessing its own community of experts” [ Nissani 1997 ], or “self-regulating and self-sustaining communities” [ Lattuca 2002 ]).
• Degree of cooperation or interaction . A critical component of a vast majority of the definitions was the degree of cooperation or interaction between members of the collaborative teams, the amount of contact between team members and the degree of sharing of information. Modes of interdisciplinary research with low degrees of synthesis (see Table 2 ) necessitate very little, if any, cooperation between researchers. Modes of interdisciplinary research with even a moderate degree of synthesis between disciplines require ever-greater degrees of interaction between researchers. Distinctions were often made with respect to what is shared, that is, whether it is limited to the specific research topic of concern or extended to include discussions regarding methods and conceptual frameworks.

Characteristics of Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary, and Transdisciplinary Research

• Outcome of the collaboration (e.g., solution to discrete problem, new language). Finally, the outcome of the collaboration was often included as a component of the definition. Authors noted that interdisciplinary research may result in the solution of a discreet problem, a single or group of publications, the development of a new field and/or language, and by some in the humanities, the process of the interdisciplinary endeavor itself was the intended outcome. Transdisciplinary endeavors set out to create synthesis between disciplines and are the mode most likely to result in the development of a new field of study or language.

A preliminary definition of interdisciplinary research was developed, based on the key themes and continuum identified in the literature search: “Any study or group of studies undertaken by scholars from two or more distinct academic fields, based on a conceptual model that links or integrates theoretical frameworks from those disciplines, using study design and methodology that is not limited to any one field, and requiring the use of perspectives and skills of the involved disciplines in all phases from study design through data collection, data analysis, specifying conclusions and preparing manuscripts and other reports of work completed.” This preliminary definition was then subjected to a field test of review by twelve experts in interdisciplinary research. All but one reviewer had self-identified expertise in more than one discipline including biochemistry, economics, epidemiology, genetics, health care-associated infections, health policy, infectious disease, internal medicine, medicine, microbiology, molecular biology, nursing, nursing informatics, patient safety, pharmacology, pharmacy, public health, quantitative research, radiology, sociomedical sciences, women's health, and infectious diseases.

Issues raised and discussed by the group included the scope of the definition (i.e., whether it should be limited to health-related research) and the extent to which it should be limited to academic disciplines. One addition to the draft definition was suggested with six reviewers indicating that some variation of the NIH statement “to solve a given biologic problem” should be incorporated, but only two of these reviewers left biologic in the statement. The primary focus of suggestions for replacement text was the phrase “academic fields.” In some instances, academic was simply deleted. Other replacements included: scientific disciplines, disciplines, and investigative fields.

Based on the field test, we chose not to include the statement “to solve a biologic problem” in order to retain a broader definition not limited to health sciences and to describe those involved in interdisciplinary research as “scholars” rather than members of an academic discipline.

Based on our systematic literature review, interviews and field test with interdisciplinary researchers, the authors recommend the following definition of interdisciplinary research:

Interdisciplinary research is any study or group of studies undertaken by scholars from two or more distinct scientific disciplines. The research is based upon a conceptual model that links or integrates theoretical frameworks from those disciplines, uses study design and methodology that is not limited to any one field, and requires the use of perspectives and skills of the involved disciplines throughout multiple phases of the research process.

This definition may prove useful to decision makers in funding agencies or on program committees. The mere addition of researchers from various disciplines or with different academic and professional credentials is not sufficient to make a research effort interdisciplinary. Analysis of the conceptual framework, study design and execution, data analysis, and conclusions can be used to establish the true degree of interdisciplinarity. As noted in the results, serious consideration was given to limiting this definition of interdisciplinary research to biologic problems. While this limitation may apply to much research on the specific topic of CIRAR, or of many NIH-funded studies, the definition was not intended to apply only to those cases. There are many interdisciplinary studies in the heath field that are primarily directed toward a systemic, economic, or social issue with a much more remote link to a biologic problem. Any group of scholars, or any funding agency, will place some limitation on the type of problem to be solved, and could easily do so by modifying “problem” in the generic definition provided.

Further, the use of this definition will provide the basis for the specification of the competencies necessary for an individual researcher to move from accomplishment in his/her original discipline to successful participation in interdisciplinary work. Focus on needed competencies can then drive team development within established interdisciplinary centers and training programs for the next generation of interdisciplinary scholars. Our proposed definition may also shed more light on other practical issues needed to facilitate interdisciplinary research endeavors, as an example, those addressed by the National Academy of Sciences ( NAS 2005 ) such as institutional handling of promotion/tenure, and training for students, fellows, and faculty. Clarification of interdisciplinarity in health-related research will provide the foundation for a more complete understanding of transdisciplinary efforts, if experience proves that this third stage is an essential element of our efforts.

The focus on more holistic views of knowledge and the world have emerged in part as a counter to what is seen as the reductionistic efforts of single scientific disciplines. NIH and others have not abandoned the precision and detail that can emerge from single-discipline studies but the addition of truly interdisciplinary efforts can facilitate moving beyond individually established facts to meeting the complex challenges we face with more dynamic applications of emerging knowledge.

In summary, many researchers have conducted interdisciplinary research because they have recognized the limitations of their disciplinary perspective when faced with complex health care and health policy research questions. At this time, however, such interdisciplinary research often occurs by default or in an unsystematic manner, depending upon the initiative of individual researchers. We believe that interdisciplinary research must increasingly become the standard rather than the exception because the approaches needed and the implications of health care and health policy research are by their very nature interdisciplinary. The development of an expanded definition of interdisciplinary research is a first step in the evolution of interdisciplinarity within health-related research from a random, unsystematic occurrence to an essential, teachable research approach.

Acknowledgments

This review was written in collaboration with The Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Antimicrobial Research, CIRAR ( http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/nursing/CIRAR/ ), funded by The National Center for Research Resources, P20 RR020616.

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• Systematic Review
• Open access
• Published: 17 August 2024

Direct and indirect effects of economic sanctions on health: a systematic narrative literature review

• Vahid Yazdi-Feyzabadi 1 ,
• Atefeh Zolfagharnasab 2 ,
• Soheila Naghavi 3 ,
• Anahita Behzadi 1 ,
• Maysam Yousefi 4 &
• Mohammad Bazyar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2543-1862 5  

BMC Public Health volume  24 , Article number:  2242 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

Economic sanctions are defined as restrictions imposed by other countries against individuals, groups, or governments of other countries. These sanctions have a detrimental impact on the economies of countries and can also limit access to healthcare services for people as a secondary consequence. This study aims to systematically review the literature to examine the direct and indirect effects of economic sanctions on health through a narrative synthesis.

This systematic literature review was limited to papers published between January 1990 and July 2023. Relevant documents published in English and Persian were searched for in databases including Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, SID, Magiran, and Irandoc. The direct and indirect effects of sanctions on health were classified using two frameworks proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO): the Health System Building Blocks and “Social Determinants of Health”.

Out of a total of 18,219 articles, 59 were selected based on inclusion criteria. The effects of sanctions were divided into direct and indirect groups. Direct effects encompassed seven main themes: access to essential medicine, medical products, vaccines and technologies; financing; health workforce; service delivery; research and health information systems; health outcomes; and financial risk protection. Indirect effects also were classified into six main themes: socioeconomic status; food and agricultural products; stress; early life conditions; high-risk behaviors and addiction; and transport. Most studies focused on the access to medicines, food, economic and social status.

Conclusions

Economic sanctions have had profoundly negative impacts on all aspects of the healthcare system. The international community must address these effects on health and take necessary measures to prevent or mitigate them, particularly in ensuring the provision of basic and essential healthcare needs for individuals and communities.

Peer Review reports

Sanctions are purposeful and determined restrictions imposed by one or more countries against another individual, group or countries’ government. Sanctions are usually imposed by international organizations as a pressure tool for responding to the course of actions of any country that opposes them [ 1 ].

Economic sanctions are the most common type of these restrictions. The two main types of these sanctions are trade and financial restrictions. Trade sanctions restrict imports to and exports from the countries under sanctions while financial sanctions are closely related to economic ones, but their focus is on banning the money flows and financial resources into or out of the country. These sanctions can include blocking government assets, restricting access to financial markets, loans and credits limitations, restricting international financial exchange, and also sales and trade abroad [ 2 ].

Economic sanctions reduce people’s access to basic necessities of life by debilitating the economic situation, decreasing welfare and weakening the functions of the target country’s social systems. One of the most important areas affected through these boycotts is health. Due to the expansion of health scope, these limitations affect different parts of health system itself and as a result endanger people’s life [ 3 , 4 ].

Studies in various countries, including Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Yugoslavia and Haiti, discussed the effects of sanctions on health. In Haiti, economic sanctions have reduced incomes, increased unemployment and poverty along with mortality by 1 to 4 years, and destroyed families [ 5 ]. In Iran, especially in healthcare area, sanctions have resulted in increasing the cost of essential procedures and drugs such as diagnostic procedures for cancers and chemotherapy drugs. The difficulties in getting required licenses for financial transactions and transportation insurance due to sanctions has left the country with a shortage of drugs and health equipment [ 6 ].

Sanctions have devastating effects on the health of vulnerable patients or health systems customers too. Patients who are suffering from diseases such as asthma, thalassemia, hemophilia, chronic diseases, blood disorders, multiple sclerosis and HIV/AIDS have limited access to drugs [ 7 ]. While comparing, in developed countries mortality rates decreased using appropriate drugs [ 8 , 9 ].

Different countries may use broad policies to prevent or adjust the negative effects of economic problems on health systems, although these policies may not be successful in ensuring continued access to health services [ 10 , 11 ].

Although sanctions may be designed for excluding medical products from the list, they can still have an inevitable impact on access to health services. Thus, the imposition of economic sanctions can threaten public health directly [ 12 ].

Furthermore, economic sanctions suppress the health indirectly by adversely impacting on other related parts known as social determinants of health (SDH) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Economic sanctions impact all aspects of the social determinants of health (SDH) framework, leading to negative effects on health equity and well-being. Sanctions can alter social and political systems, such as governance, labor markets, education, trade, housing, and redistributive policies, influencing people’s health. Structural determinants like income, education, and occupation are affected by sanctions, changing health opportunities and status, especially for the economically disadvantaged. Intermediary determinants, including material and psychosocial circumstances, are also influenced negatively by sanctions. For instance, housing quality declines post-sanctions due to increased costs of land and materials, while food consumption patterns shift towards cheaper, less nutritious options. Sanctions create psychosocial stressors like job insecurity and uncertainty, leading to frustration and stress [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ].

Continued sanctions may hinder countries’ progress towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG-3 for healthy lives and well-being. Economic stability is crucial for meeting health-related SDGs, and any failures in this regard would disproportionately impact citizens in targeted countries. In the context of developing countries, where progress toward SDGs is often hindered by limited resources and systemic disparities, the impact of economic sanctions on health systems and overall well-being is profound. SDGs, with their emphasis on health (Goal 3) and the overarching aim of leaving no one behind, seek to address disparities and ensure equitable access to healthcare services. Economic sanctions, however, disrupt this delicate balance, exacerbating existing inequalities and impeding the ability of nations to meet the health-related targets outlined in the SDGs [ 13 ].

Given that, the effects of sanctions depend on the situation of countries and vary from one to another, there is no complete evidence of a comprehensive impact of sanctions on different part of society’s system especially in health despite of its importance. To comprehensively address these issues, a rigorous examination of evidence through narrative systematic reviews becomes imperative. This study aims to provide a detailed narrative synthesis of the direct and indirect effects of economic sanctions on health system building blocks and public health focusing on social determinants of health, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the broader consequences of such measures.

The following steps were taken to review literature systematically [ 17 , 18 ].

Research question

The main question that we wanted to answer in this study was to investigate and categorize the effects that economic sanctions impose on health directly and indirectly.

Search strategy and identifying literature

This systematic review was carried out according to the latest version of PRISMA guidelines [ 19 , 20 ]. For the purposes of the study, following databases were searched by one of the authors experienced in systematic research: Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, SID, Magiran, Irandoc. The search strategy (see Additional file 1 for an example) was first devised for use in PubMed and subsequently adapted for the other databases. The search was limited to papers published between January 1990 and July 2023 and to studies involving economic sanctions independently as a hard power exercise. Other hard power exercises to achieve foreign policy goals such as war and conflicts were excluded. We selected the appropriate keywords from studying similar studies, discussion among research team and intended frameworks for extracting the data. The search term “sanctions” and “public health” were used for PubMed; terms associated with “economic sanctions” and “public health” were used for the title or abstract in the other databases if required (MeSH term; major focus and/or exploded depending on the database). In brief the following terms were searched using Boolean operators: sanction, embargo, health, human resource, medical instrument, medicine, pharmaceutics, disease, mortality, medical equipment, medical devices, drug, health care, Taskforce, health personnel, health workers, morbidity, illness, and food.

Screening and article selection criteria

Duplicate results were removed after searching the databases using Endnote software version X8. After removing the duplications, a screening of publications, based on titles and abstracts was performed by two researchers independently. In second screening, then, the suspected documents were re-examined by a third person from the research team to decide whether to enter or not.

As the final step of screening, the full texts of the remaining publications were independently assessed for inclusion by pairs of reviewers once more and any potential disagreements were resolved through consensus and if necessary by the third opinion from the research team.

The articles not meeting the below criteria were excluded:

Articles published in languages other than English and Persian.

Articles available in preprint servers.

Articles did not match the question and objectives of the research like those related to the effects of wars and conflict on health.

Conference abstracts, books, reports and dissertations.

Records not in line with the quantitative, qualitative and mixed-method original articles including letter to Editor, commentary, opinion/viewpoint/perspective.

Articles published before 1990.

After reaching the final list of studies to be reviewed thoroughly, we supplemented our database search by screening bibliographic of chosen articles to identify any additional relevant publications. The bibliographic of other relevant systematic articles were also searched actively for retrieving other missing articles.

Data extraction

After finalizing the final list of articles, the full text of the selected articles were studied precisely and required information was extracted. In order to capture the maximum available evidence regarding the effects of economic sanctions, no quality assessment was employed in our systematic literature review. This approach allowed us to include a wide range of studies, regardless of their methodological quality, thus providing a comprehensive overview of the existing literature. This method is consistent with approaches used in narrative synthesis where the primary aim is to summarize broad evidence on a topic rather than critically appraise each study’s quality. The extracted information was divided into two sections. The first one, consisting the bibliographic information included the title of article, the year of publication, the first author, and the title of the journal and the second section reports the frequency of articles according to the main topics addressed in their results.

Data analysis and presenting results

For identifying key concepts and main themes, each of selected articles studied carefully. After completing the data extraction table, the researchers shared the concepts with other members of the research team, and agreement was reached. As many other factors outside the borders of health system affects the health, generally known as social determinants of health (SDH), we applied two common popular frameworks to categorize the direct and indirect effects impacts of sanctions on health system and public health. To address the direct impact of sanctions on health, Health System Building Blocks framework proposed by World Health Organization (WHO) was proposed which consists of six key components including “service delivery”, “health workforce”, “health information systems”, “access to essential medicines”, “financing” and “government/ leadership”. This framework also covers intermediate (e.g. access, coverage, quality and safety) and four final goals including Improved health (level and equity), Responsiveness, Social and financial risk protection, and Improved efficiency [ 21 , 22 ].

To cover other effects of sanctions occurring in other sections beyond the health system but affecting health indirectly, the approach of “Social Determinants of Health” was applied which comprises of the following 10 elements, “The social gradient”, “Stress”, “Early life conditions”, “Social exclusion”, “Work”, “Unemployment”, “Social support”, “Addiction”, “Food”, and “Transport“ [ 23 ].

Search process

A total number of 18,219 articles were identified, which after removing the overlaps, 12,838 articles remained. Following the initial review of the title and abstract of all retrieved articles, a further 12,439 articles were excluded. Out of 399 records, the full text of 390 articles were retrieved and evaluated for eligibility.

After a final review, 331 articles were excluded due to not intended study design or not addressing the question and aims of the current research. Finally 59 research articles were included in the study (Fig.  1 ). A summary of included studies’ features is reported in Table  1 .

The PRISMA algorithm of study selection process

Study features

The study information collected from 11 countries which included Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Syria, Haiti, Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Serbia, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Russia and South Africa. Iraq [ 4 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ] and Iran [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ] had the maximum number of studies. Most of the studies were descriptive or analytical. Four were qualitative and also three studies were designed as a mix-method. The share of different regions from economic sanctions studies is shown in Fig.  2 .

The different regions share of economic sanctions studies

Study areas

Included studies have examined the impact of sanctions in various areas. The amount of available and accessible information about the effect of sanctions varied from one area to another. Most studies addressed the impact of economic sanctions on access to medicine or food and also socioeconomic status.

Almost half of studies mentioned the effect of sanctions on access to drugs, these studies covered approximately all countries targeted by sanctions. More than a quarter, discussed the socioeconomic situation. Food access and malnutrition were also explained in about another quarter of the articles. According to studies, the vulnerable groups which affected most by sanctions were the poor, patients, women and children. The proportion of different parts of health system and different social health determinants affected by economic sanctions is reported in Table  2 ; Fig.  3 .

The proportion of different parts of health system and social determinants of health mentioned in retrieved studies which are affected by economic sanctions

The Table  2 provides an overview of the frequency of direct and indirect effects of sanctions on health, based on findings from 59 selected articles. The data is categorized into direct effects on the health system and indirect effects on population/public health, highlighting both the immediate and broader consequences of sanctions. The most frequently mentioned direct effect was the impact on access to essential medicine, medical products, vaccines, and technologies, with 22 documents, accounting for 37.3% of the papers. On the other hand, the most frequently cited indirect effect was on the socioeconomic situation, mentioned in 9 documents (15.2%).

Themes and sub-themes

The effects of sanctions on health were categorized into two broad direct and indirect groups. Following the WHO’ Health System Building Blocks, direct effects include 7 main themes as followed: access to essential medicine, medical products, vaccines and technologies; financing; health workforce; service delivery; research and health information systems; health outcomes; and financial risk protection (Table  3 ). Indirect effects also were summarized in 6 main themes consisting: socioeconomic status; food and agricultural products; stress; early life conditions; high-risk behaviors and addiction; and transportation (Table  4 ).

Direct effects

Access to medicines, medical products, vaccines, and technologies.

Access to medicine is one of the main goals of health systems. Numerous studies have been reported on drug shortages and public concerns about patients’ difficulties for getting their essential’s [ 46 ]. The findings related to access to medicine were divided further into three sub-themes: reduced access to imported raw materials, decreased access to imported or foreign drugs, and increased drug prices.

There are some findings indicated that sanctions prevent the import of essential medical supplies [ 29 , 36 , 44 , 47 , 48 ]. Therefore, the manufacture of local drugs is affected and access to them is reduced.

For example, Iran experienced a significant decrease in access to asthma drugs which produced locally in Iran, because of local producers relied on imported raw materials [ 36 ]. In Yugoslavia, as a result of imposing restrictions on pharmaceutical industry, the available essential drugs decreased by more than 50% [ 47 ]. Syria also faced a shortage of raw materials for producing domestic drugs for heart disease, cancer and diabetes [ 48 ]. In a similar way, in Iraq, the provision of laboratory services reduced because of raw chemicals shortage [ 29 ].

Limited access to imported drugs was another direct effect [ 49 ]. The shortage of essential medicines in countries suffering from sanctions was a main concern and access to such medicines including chemotherapy, chronically illness treatments, psychiatric services, MS and antiepileptic drugs was limited considerably [ 29 , 31 , 36 , 37 , 40 , 42 , 44 , 47 , 50 ]. Access to hemophilia and thalassemia drugs was severely affected too [ 39 ]. Problems caused by economic sanctions also affected the pharmaceutical market which as a result, lead to an sharp increase in the prices [ 5 , 42 , 51 ].

Studies showed that economic sanctions reduced the import of and access to medical equipment to great extent [ 3 , 24 , 29 , 52 ]. In Cuba, the number of X-rays decreased by 75% [ 3 ]. Many American companies refused to sell drugs or medical equipment assigned for Nicaragua. Severe shortage of medical products in health system became apparent in 1985 and worsened in 1986 [ 24 ].

Also, studies revealed that economic sanctions have reduced access to vaccines and caused less immunization against infectious diseases [ 25 , 53 ].

In case of Cuba, the country’s ability to produce chlorine decreased and the number of populations with no access to safe drinking water increased, therefore population covered by chlorine water systems decreased from 98% in 1988 to 26% in 1994 [ 3 ].

Health financing

Health financing counts as essential ability of health systems to maintain and improve the community well-being. The economic crisis is affecting the financial capacity of health care system and has hampered the financial support for providing health services [ 52 , 54 ]. During the economic sanctions, budget constraints also prevented some health care programs from being fully implemented [ 31 ].

Health workforce

A study done in Iraq showed that economic sanctions resulted in widespread expulsions of health care professionals, while many of them were belong to foreign nationals. Also, physicians had to do a lot of extra work, along with increasing pressures which caused them.

leave their jobs behind [ 29 , 31 ].

Health services delivery

The imposition of economic sanctions, resulted in labor shortages, limited access to medical equipment, affecting the process of providing health services and made it worse. This imposed much more pressure on the ability of health system as whole particularly during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic [ 55 ]. Meanwhile various studies showed a reduction in quantity and quality of provided services too [ 5 , 29 , 31 , 52 , 56 , 57 ]. A study in Iran showed that due to economic sanctions, from 18 brachytherapy centers in 2018, only two centers were usable since 2015 and also the gap between Iran’s available facilities for radiation therapy and international standards deepened [ 58 ]. According to the Program of Action for Cancer Therapy, sanctions have disrupted Iran’s National Cancer Control Program (NCCP) as they have influenced all phases of treatment from prevention, to diagnosis/treatment, palliative care, monitoring, and also technology and drug availability [ 59 ].

Research and health information systems

The effects of economic sanctions on research and health information systems were divided into three sub-themes: reduced access to scientific resources and virtual sites, disruption of international interactions and conferences, and restricted research activities. Sanctions also limited access to scientific magazines and books [ 29 , 52 ]. Specialists were unable to get visas and travel abroad to attend international conferences, which reduced scientific exchanges [ 52 ].

The severe financial pressure of sanctions intensified restrictions of scientific travels and communications with the outside world led to a lack of access to educational materials and global medical advances [ 31 ].

Economic sanctions also had negative effects on both research and science production activities, including smaller scientific communication, difficulties in research processes, and consequently, decline in the quality along with quantity of research and science development activities [ 14 , 45 , 60 ].

Health outcomes and financing risk protection

International evidence about the UN sanctions indicates that they reduces life expectancy by about 1.2–1.4 years on average. It was also shown that this reduction is much more severe in vulnerable groups of society like women. This lower life expectancy in the studied countries occurred to great extent due to higher child mortality and Cholera deaths and also spending less amount of public budget on health care [ 61 , 62 ]. Studies from Iran show that multiple sclerosis patients faced higher out-of-pocket payments, catastrophic health expenditures and the poverty index [ 63 ]. Similarly, studies from other countries show higher mortality rate from infectious diseases and more difficulties for optic and neuropathic patients [ 64 , 65 ]. Physical rehabilitation experts in Iran also concern about high price that people with physical problems have to pay for prostheses which in turn have negative consequences for practitioners themselves [ 66 ].

Indirect effects

The effects of economic sanctions are not targeted and they also influence sectors other than health which can affect general health indirectly. These effects can be categorized under a general concept as social determinants of health (SDH). The main SDHs extracted from the retrieved studies are as follows:

Economic and social status

The main target of economic sanctions is the economy and money flows of countries which had negative consequences for countries’ economy themselves and other related areas [ 67 ]. The indirect outcomes in the area of Economic and Social Status were categorized into 6 sub-themes including: rising unemployment, decreasing income, declining welfare, increasing poverty, trade barriers, rising prices and decreasing purchasing power.

Majority of studies in Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Haiti, Syria, South Africa addressed the effects of sanctions on the socioeconomic situation [ 4 , 5 , 29 , 44 , 47 , 48 , 52 , 68 ]. These sanctions banned and reduced the exports of products which in turn caused unemployment among those who relied on importing such products to make money. Unemployment rose sharply in Haiti with the cessation of mango exports, on which many poor people depended [ 47 ]. Also, in this country some of factories such as clothing, sports and assembly, reduced the number of workers, which was accompanied by rising the rate of job loss [ 5 ].

Continuing this situation, economic problems became more and more prevalent. In Haiti, many people lost their main source of income [ 5 ]. In Iraq, wage fell and there was hardly enough to buy the necessities of daily life [ 29 ]. A review of studies during this period revealed that the reason of increasing social problems and the disintegration of many family structures was the fall in incomes [ 5 , 44 ].

On the other hand, poverty increased as soon as economic problems intensified. Some of the middle classes’ families were forced to sell their houses and apartments [ 29 ]. Also, school enrollment declined due to the poverty [ 5 ].

Another important effect was trade barriers so that reduced the rate of investment and the number of foreign companies. The number of active American companies in South Africa fell from 267 in 1986 to 104 in 1991 [ 47 ]. Loss of markets, credits, and favorable trade conditions, devaluation of the national currency against the US dollar, the oil exports stoppage, alongside the reduction of basic goods imports were among the other effects [ 29 , 47 , 48 ]. On the other hand, prices increased while purchasing power decreased [ 4 , 5 , 48 , 52 ].

Food and agriculture

Numerous studies in Iran, Cuba, Iraq, and Haiti have shown that economic sanctions reduced food imports while increased their prices, and restricted proper diet 41) [ 3 , 5 , 24 , 29 , 47 ]. In Cuba, food imports decreased by almost 50% from 1989 to 1993 as a result of falling rate of imports while shifting to low-quality protein products which posed serious threats on population’s health. In Haiti, staple food prices increased fivefold from 1991 to 1993 [ 47 ]. Likewise, the prices of all food groups increased significantly in Iran in 2018 due to the limitations in international financial exchanges, right after the re-imposition of sanctions. The price increase was higher in vegetable, meat, and fruit groups which made it nearly impossible to follow a healthy diet [ 69 ].

Prices of basic commodities such as wheat, rice and sugar rose in Iraq, too [ 29 ]. On the other hand, the lack of foods containing B vitamins group in Cuba led to the epidemic of neuropathy [ 47 ]. Poor nutrition among pregnant women in Iraq increased anemia [ 24 ]. Meal and per capita protein intake decreased [ 3 , 5 ]. At the same time malnutrition also increased during restrictions [ 5 , 35 , 47 , 70 ] and furthermore caused reduction in crop production and agricultural support [ 5 , 71 ]. Other studies also revealed that availability and stability were the most affected dimensions of food security following imposing economic sanctions [ 72 ]. A study about the impact of the UN and US economic sanctions on the environment in Iran found that while these sanctions initially improved Iran’s environment in the short term, they had long-term damaging effects [ 73 ].

Economic sanctions exacerbate stressful conditions. According to studies, increased fear and uncertainty, and increased mental health problems are among the negative effects of sanctions in this category [ 5 , 31 , 48 , 53 , 74 ].

Early life conditions

A good start in life means supporting mothers and young children. A study found the exposure to adverse economic conditions in infancy and early childhood was effective in long-term negative health outcomes [ 75 ].

High-risk and addictive behaviors

People turning to high-risk behaviors and addiction along with their consumption patterns can be affected and intensified by economic and social conditions. According to the findings, the effects of economic sanctions in case of risky and addictive behavior were categorized into two sub-groups consist of increasing high-risk behaviors and addiction.

As evidences revealed, economic sanctions increased suicide and violence. Studies shown that the rate of deaths caused by violence and suicides have increased in Yugoslavia and Cuba during limitation periods [ 3 , 47 ]. In Haiti, charges against children, criminal conspiracy, robbery, and drug use were much more serious [ 5 ] and this happened along with another important result which was changing in drug use patterns and increased drug abuse problems.

The common use of syringes for drug injection has increased, posing a risk to abusers. Due to economic problems, people entered mass drug distribution networks and drug trafficking to make money; tried steal or other illegal ways to earn money for buying or supplying drugs. Rising drug prices have led to the neglect family economic basket and reduced attention to the factors such as education and health care, which have resulted in low quality of life for consumers and their families [ 41 ].

According to the studies, economic sanctions in different countries affected communities’ health in different ways. Economic sanctions are supposed to force a country’s government to reconsider its policies by putting and imposing economic pressure. Although they should not target humanitarian goods, studies in various countries have revealed their direct and indirect effects on community’s health and threats for people’s right to health. The most important effects were found in the access to medicine and change in socio-economic conditions, while ensuring access to medicines for people who needed them, is one of the most emphasized goals of health systems all around the world [ 76 ]. Clearly economic sanctions suppress economic growth of the targeted countries in different ways and the lower economic situation can influence all aspects of the whole community and people’ life including their health status directly and indirectly. The World Bank data confirm that sanctions reduced Iran’s economic growth by 38% within three years, as GDP per capita dropped from US$ 7833 in 2012 to US$ 4862 in 2015. Moreover, unemployment increased from 10.4% in 2013 to 13.1% in 2017, and the economic inequality in household expenditure, measured by Gini coefficient, increased from 37 to 41%, since 2012, due to economic sanction. Clearly this economic inequality can lead to health inequity in population [ 77 ]. When the economic situation worsens in general, the financial capacity of health system and also the financial power of people will be affected. Evidence from different studies proved that the general budget of health decreased and out-of-pocket payments increased especially for those patients who depend on foreign and imported drugs [ 54 , 63 ].

In the present study, surveys in different countries showed that economic sanctions through devaluing the national currency, affected access to health goods and services, including drugs and medical equipment. Countries depending on drug technology, requiring the imported raw materials, experienced a severe restriction for accessing to medicine and drugs. On the other hand, these limitations caused a sudden increase or inflation in the prices of medicine and equipment. This effect would be worse for people who suffer from chronic diseases and are unable to purchase or use health care services [ 16 ]. For example, sanctions in 2011 caused a 14 times increase in the price of formula in Iran for infants suffering from food allergies. Besides that, uncertainty about the availability of drugs following sanctions also changes the behavior of people as the stored formula for infants not needing a specific formula which was enough for 2 months was distributed only within 4 days in September, 2018 [ 78 ].

This is while the economic sanctions reducing the power of supporting health services by limiting budgets and funds. Health financing is essential for the ability of health systems to maintain and improve human health through keeping them capable to fund and provide health services. Without the necessary funding, no health workers will be hired, no medication will be available, and as the same way, no health promotion or prevention will take place [ 23 ]. As a result, considering the negative impact of sanctions, the financing system faces serious problems in three main functions of resource collection, pooling, and purchasing. The ability of countries to achieve health system’s goals largely depends on the knowledge, skills, motivation and deployment of individuals to organize and provide health services [ 23 ]. Numerous studies showed evidence of a direct relationship between health human resource and population outcomes [ 79 , 80 ].

Sanctions made it impossible to strengthen service delivery for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to health by reducing the rate of occupied health workforce and forcing them to migrate. Studies assessed the impact of economic crises shown that these restrictions affected the health sector by increasing public vulnerability as same as the inability to meet public needs and expectations due to limited resources [ 81 , 82 , 83 ]. The findings from Iran show that sanctions can influence health care delivery adversely during health pandemics like COVID-19 disease in various direct and indirect ways [ 55 ]. Therefore, if sanctions continue, the reduction of inputs will hinder the improvement of service delivery and access to them. On the other hand, they disrupt access to health services even though with minimum quality standards.

About the research, sanctions limited and disqualified research activities by banning the access to most scientific and valid resources and disrupting international interactions and conferences. The small and isolated scientific communication has slowed down the health promotion progresses and limited the access to standards and protocols for promoting public health based on scientific evidence [ 31 , 45 ].

At the same time, economic sanctions affected on social determinants of health in various dimensions. Loss of markets, credits and favorable trading conditions reduces the value of the national currency and the ability to import goods. While, the cost of basic goods is strongly affected and prices increased [ 47 , 48 ]. Thus, sanctions forced severe negative effects on people’s health status by reduction of income, welfare, along with increasing unemployment and poverty [ 5 , 29 , 84 ]. This negative impact is more evident on the poor. These people cannot access or buy high or even sometimes low quality health care services.

Another effect of sanctions is reducing access to the food. Sanctions will restrict access to enough food for countries which import their agricultural products. Countries producing their own food products have better resilience. Limitation on access to basic material and food, as well as the economic pressures and declining incomes, affect the pattern of food consumption. Increasing the price of all kinds of food, turning to poor quality and unhealthy foods, as well as buying cheaper, low-nutrient ones, exacerbate malnutrition and make following a healthy diet impossible [ 69 , 70 , 85 ]. It should be noted that imposing sanctions are not always bad and sometimes they force countries to redesign their internal processes. The experience of Russian shows that although sanctions adversely influence agriculture to some extent but instead they played as the new momentum and help its dairy and milk sector to devise positive changes and increase the volume of inter-regional trade in milk and dairy products [ 86 ].

From a psychological point of view, the poor and fragile economic situation reduces the value of assets as same as the loss of purchasing power, which leads to increased frustration and stress in people. Frustration and despair cause and exacerbate various diseases [ 87 ]. Stressful situations also make people feel anxious, worried and unable to cope with. Psychosocial risks accumulate throughout life and increase the likelihood of poor mental health and premature death [ 23 ]. Findings from Iran proved that sanctions also affect mental health adversely. According to the WHO’ data, sanctions led to an increase in death due to self-harm and interpersonal violence in Iran (from 5.9 to 6.1 and from an average of 2.0 to 2.7 per 100,000 persons respectively) during the 2011–2014 period. Interestingly the self-harm related death reduced again in 2016, a year after lifting the sanctions [ 77 ].

Risky behaviors and addiction are taking as new behaviors patterns as a result of economic hardships and raised prices. Drug abuse has devastating effects on human health, while increase the rates of crime and mortality [ 88 ]. The highest incidence rate of HIV is among drug abusers and their sexual partners [ 89 ]. Thus, sanctions intensify these behaviors and patterns with a growing trend, which counts as a great threat to society and especially health system. A review of literature provides many evidence of sanctions effects on health while evidence was provided for most affected areas.

Many studies looked at the effects on access to medicines and medical equipment, research and health information systems, the socioeconomic situation, food and agriculture, and provided a clear picture of consequences. Although some others, focused on one specific area, the others discussed about the issues such as government or leadership, early life conditions, social isolation, social support, transportation which were less in number with no complete and clear evidence that needs further investigation. The most studies in our review examined the effects of sanctions using data and their analysis, or the pre- and post-sanctions situation. Therefore, according to our methodology and included studies, the extracted evidence is very valuable and reliable.

Understanding the impact of economic sanctions on health systems and social determinants of health is crucial for policymakers, highlighting the importance of collaborative global health governance. To address these challenges, a comprehensive approach is needed to minimize harm to vulnerable populations and promote a more equitable and resilient global health environment. Policymakers must reevaluate the effectiveness and unintended consequences of sanctions on health systems, prioritizing humanitarian concerns and ensuring that public health is not disproportionately affected. It is essential to explore alternative diplomatic strategies that allow for humanitarian exemptions within sanctions to guarantee the continued access to essential medical supplies for affected populations. Global health diplomacy should be leveraged to advocate for the removal or modification of sanctions hindering progress towards health-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Dialogue and negotiation should be prioritized to address underlying tensions while safeguarding the health and well-being of impacted communities. Establishing robust monitoring systems to track the impact of sanctions on health outcomes and social determinants is crucial. Strengthening multilateral collaborations and partnerships to address the health effects of sanctions is imperative, with international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations (UN) playing a pivotal role in promoting global cooperation and finding solutions.

Strengths and limitations of the study

One of our limitations was the lack of access to the full text of some articles due to their publication time. Other studies may have been published in other languages about sanctions are excluded because of inclusion criteria. Other limitations may include losing articles about the impact of sanctions on various aspects of the health system that have lost their chance to be published due to political reasons.

Although the present study examined the impact of sanctions on the health system based on the Health System Building Blocks framework of the World Health Organization and using the approach of European SDH, it seems that in some areas the effects are not clear and further studies need to be done. However, given that the impact of sanctions varies from one country to another, the study has provided comprehensive evidence of the impacts along with consequences on health. The present evidence provides guide and helps with the adoption of international policies considering the goals of the WHO and the promotion of peace all around the world.

The results showed that economic sanctions imposed on different countries, directly and indirectly have strong negative impacts on health. Escalation of sanctions will be a severe threat and barrier for achieving the goal of global health coverage for everyone and everywhere. The international communities must work and focus on reducing the negative effects of these restrictions. They must anticipate the human effects and use whatever means are needed to prevent them. Some of these negative effects like disability and death, are irreversible. Therefore, it seems better for decision makers to recommend an international prescriptive to prevent such irreparable effects on the population of target countries before imposing sanctions.

Data availability

All data generated during the current study would be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

Social Determinants of Health

Sustainable Development Goals

World Health Organization

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Kerman University of medical Sciences for preparing the required fund to do the study.

This study was supported financially by Institute for Futures Studies in Health, affiliated with Vice-Chancellery for Research and Technology of Kerman University of Medical Sciences.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Health Services Management Research Center, Institute for Futures Studies in Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman City, Iran

Vahid Yazdi-Feyzabadi & Anahita Behzadi

Faculty of Management and Medical Information Sciences, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman City, Iran

Atefeh Zolfagharnasab

Soheila Naghavi

Research Center of Tropical and Infectious Diseases, Kerman University of medical sciences, Kerman, Iran

Maysam Yousefi

Faculty of Health, Health Management and Economics Department, Ilam University of Medical Sciences, Ilam City, Iran

Mohammad Bazyar

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VYF proposed the topic, VYF and MB designed the study; AZ did the search strategy and identified articles. MB and SN screened the articles and extracted and classified the data; AB and MY supervised and contributed in classifications of findings. VYF and AB supervised the whole process of study from literature review to data extraction. MB and AB prepared and finalized the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript for submission.

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Correspondence to Mohammad Bazyar .

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Yazdi-Feyzabadi, V., Zolfagharnasab, A., Naghavi, S. et al. Direct and indirect effects of economic sanctions on health: a systematic narrative literature review. BMC Public Health 24 , 2242 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19750-w

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19750-w

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Strengthening akis for sustainable agricultural features: insights and innovations from the european unio: a literature review.

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 2.1. data collection procedure, 2.2. identification criteria, 2.3. screening and selection criteria, 2.4. eligibility and inclusion criteria.

• The studies that were carried out or considered the 28 countries in the European Union (including the United Kingdom until 2019 and excluding Romania).
• Studies published in the English Language.
• Studies that were published within the past 11 years (the review covers the period from 2014 to 2024, a period in which the two previous Programming Periods of the Common Agricultural Policy were implemented).
• Studies covering the inclusion of a transparent description of the process of data acquisition and interpretation.
• Studies covering a primary or secondary class investigation on the subject matter.
• Studies showcasing the effects of AKISs and FASs on agricultural knowledge advancement.
• Studies published in a non-English language.
• Studies carried out outside the EU.
• Studies with unclear methodology of data collection and analysis.
• Studies lacking author names and affiliation.
• Studies not covering both the main issues of this review (i.e., AKIS and FAS).

4. Discussion

4.1. akis and fas in the foreground through the new cap, 4.2. improving the effectiveness of an akis, 5. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Kountios, G.; Kanakaris, S.; Moulogianni, C.; Bournaris, T. Strengthening AKIS for Sustainable Agricultural Features: Insights and Innovations from the European Unio: A Literature Review. Sustainability 2024 , 16 , 7068. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16167068

Kountios G, Kanakaris S, Moulogianni C, Bournaris T. Strengthening AKIS for Sustainable Agricultural Features: Insights and Innovations from the European Unio: A Literature Review. Sustainability . 2024; 16(16):7068. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16167068

Kountios, Georgios, Spyridon Kanakaris, Christina Moulogianni, and Thomas Bournaris. 2024. "Strengthening AKIS for Sustainable Agricultural Features: Insights and Innovations from the European Unio: A Literature Review" Sustainability 16, no. 16: 7068. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16167068

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