academy for irish cultural heritages - Research - University of Ulster

2. Foreword by the Research Institute
Director 2004-2009
Interdisciplinary research is the primary focus of the
Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages (AICH), which
was established with SPUR funding in December 2000.
In setting up the Academy, the University of Ulster was
making a key commitment to originality and innovation in
scholarship and research in the field of cultural heritages,
both Irish and international.
But how is interdisciplinary research defined, and
why is it so confusing Many established researchers
find it difficult to cope with terms such as ‘inter-’ and
‘multidisciplinarity’, but clearly they are not the same. A multidisciplinary project
draws on several disciplines, but it does not radically re-define the theoretical
canon of any single discipline. A multidisciplinary research team may involve
researchers from several different disciplines. However, each researcher may
continue to operate with rigour within his or her own disciplinary framework.
In such circumstances, it is the combination of single-disciplinary skills and
insights that generates a multidisciplinary outcome, but usually one can recognize
distinctive disciplinary contributions in the end product.
In contrast, an interdisciplinary project works across disciplines and breaks down
traditional subject boundaries. An interdisciplinary assignment can, in theory,
be completed by a single individual who works across different disciplines and
combines methodologies in a radically new manner. The result, however, may be
very difficult to attribute to any single-disciplinary framework. Interdisciplinary
research may eventually generate new fields of research which cannot be easily
classified within the current disciplinary framework.
The difference between the two approaches was noted in the Academy report
last year. I drew attention to a response in the post-RAE 1996 consultation
process which pointed out that many projects described as interdisciplinary in the
previous assessment would ‘more properly be termed “multidisciplinary”, since
they bring together researchers from different subject disciplines on projects
which essentially do not re-draw the subject map.’ That response identified
other characteristics of interdisciplinarity: ‘where researchers work between and
across disciplines, drawing innovatively on the subject matter and methodologies
of more than one subject, or where a larger body of work which is similarly based
has claims to be treated as a discrete emerging discipline in its own right’.
Generally speaking, clearly defined disciplines have institutional status and
privilege. They are easy for institutions to cope with. Interdisciplinary research
is more difficult to characterize and support institutionally – although ultimately
such research may generate entirely new and paradigm-shifting results. The Irish
geographer Anne Buttimer, in her analysis of the life-cycles of various disciplines,
once characterized the early stages of an emerging field of research as the
Phoenix period ‘when new life emerges from the ashes with prospects for a
fresh beginning’. This emancipatory movement can involve a cry for freedom from
oppression or constitute an attempt ‘to soar to new heights of understanding,
being and becoming’. It is usually followed by a ‘Faustian’ disciplining of the field
in the process of gaining legitimacy in academic circles. Energies are directed
towards ‘the building of structures, institutions and legal guarantees for their
autonomous existence and identity.’ (Buttimer 1992: 43)