LERU promotes interdisciplinarity at the university
The League of European Research Universities (LERU) has created a document to give guidelines in order to promote and implement interdisciplinarity in the research-intensive universities. “Interdisciplinarity is essential for the creation of knowledge, therefore, the challenge is to make it a real force at the universities, without leaving the value of the disciplines behind”, says LERU.
The League of European Research Universities (LERU) has created a document to give guidelines in order to promote and implement interdisciplinarity in the research-intensive universities. “Interdisciplinarity is essential for the creation of knowledge, therefore, the challenge is to make it a real force at the universities, without leaving the value of the disciplines behind”, says LERU.
In this document, the university network doesnʼt regard the higher interdisciplinary research “per se” to the disciplinary one, but it says that “it is an important path to answer complex questions”. In order to create a proper environment to promote interdisciplinarity, LERU identifies three key elements: university governance; funding and evaluation; and publication and valorization on interdisciplinary research. These are the main focuses on which action is needed and it establishes a set of recommendations for each area.
The idea of the university network is to support both, discipline and interdiscipline, in an equal way to solve complex scientific problems and societal problems that transcend academic disciplines. A good balance between both types of research can bring more benefits and list university institutions in better positions as centers of knowledge production to improve the quality of life of many people.
UB examples
The report collects several examples on research and network and other interdisciplinary structures in the universities. In particular, regarding the University of Barcelona, it includes the European project EPNet (Production and distribution of food during the Roman Empire: economic and political dynamics), which links physics -in particular the study of complex networks- with history to do research on trade dynamics during the Roman Empire.
The other example is the Water Research Institute (IdRA), a research institute of the UB with around a hundred researchers from different faculties and which covers thirty research lines on different disciplines such as biology, law, geology or geography and climatology, and which has a great social, economic and resource management impact.
Link to the document