Interdisciplinary Research: My Key Takeaways
Reflecting on one year of my fellowship and what I have learnt along the way.
Image credit: https://unsplash.com/@sammoghadamkhamseh
It’s now been a year since I started my fellowship with TAS DCRC. Over the last year I’ve been working on the development of a safety framework for human-machine teaming. This research is intended to be applicable across many domains, so developing this framework has required me to collaborate with people from a wide range of disciplines and industries. My research sits in an interdisciplinary space, bringing together elements from different disciplines and industries. Working with a diversity of people has been one of the most rewarding parts of this research, but there was a learning curve that came with being immersed in interdisciplinary research. I wanted to share three key takeaways I’ve gathered over the last year that can help when working on interdisciplinary research.
One: Terminology changes across disciplines
One of the first challenges I experienced was around language. Working in the emerging space of robotics, autonomous systems and AI (RAS-AI) means working with an avalanche of terminology - terms like responsible, explainable, trustworthy, predictable, etc.. One of the main lessons I learnt quite quickly is that terms mean different things to different people. I sometimes found myself lost in discussions because I assumed a term meant a particular thing, whereas others assumed it meant something else. I now take the time to clarify what I mean when I use certain terms to ensure I’m on the same page as those I’m working with.
Two: Research approaches are not all the same
The second lesson I’ve taken away is that how people approach a problem will differ depending on their background. As an example, my background is in engineering so when I look at solving a problem, my first step is to break down the problem into smaller parts. When I’ve worked with people from different disciplines, in particular those with humanities backgrounds, I found that their approach to dealing with a problem was quite different to my own. While I tried to simplify the problem to better understand it, others would draw out the complexities of the problem as a whole, attempting to understand the broader implications of the problem and how potential solutions would address those broader implications. Neither approach is incorrect, they’re just different. I found that creating space for different approaches to research allowed me to view the work from a different perspective and it opened pathways for more innovative outcomes.
Three: All disciplines have something to offer
My final takeaway from the last year of working on this fellowship is that successful interdisciplinary work requires equity. Interdisciplinary research is a combination of knowledge, from different disciplines, being drawn together into an activity. Prioritising one discipline over another, or assuming that one discipline has less to offer in comparison to another, defeats the purpose of interdisciplinary work. Creating equal space for knowledge and contributions from the different disciplines that make up interdisciplinary work is a key factor to the success of these collaborations.
2022 was an incredibly productive year for my research and I attribute that success to the talented people I have been able to collaborate with over the last twelve months.
Credit to Rachel Aalders for coming up with the idea for this blog post. Rachel also has her own blog which you can read here.
