Interdisciplinarity beyond buzzwords

I often call myself an interdisciplinary researcher, but how often do I actually think about what that means? Well, not as often as I’d like to! But last week, I had a chance to reflect on this deeply during three vibrant days as the University of Oulu hosted the 47th Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) conference.

On the morning of June 4, I participated in the “Meet the Editor” workshop hosted by Palgrave Macmillan, focused on developing, pitching, writing, and publishing ideas for interdisciplinary books. I had the opportunity to pitch a book idea stemming from a side project: a co-written monograph on women working in heavy industries in Soviet and post-Soviet Karelia. I received very positive feedback, so hopefully we will progress slowly but steadily with this project.

That same afternoon, I took part in a roundtable organized by the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience programme, which focused on the challenges of interdisciplinary resilience research in the age of the Anthropocene.

I spoke about the need to address the temporal tensions of research. Institutional pressures in academia, such as grant cycles, short-term contracts, and rapid publication schemes, often collide with the need for slower, time-invested work. Yet building trust in communities, understanding a landscape’s depth and history, or designing a truly interdisciplinary project all take time. And we need that time to produce enduring and inclusive results.

In the evening, we enjoyed a beautiful reception organized by the City of Oulu. Very unexpectedly, I met an old acquaintance from high school whom I had not seen since graduation — probably the kind of surprise that can only happen at a truly diverse event.

Over the next two days, I attended fascinating panels on art in education, city-centered research, transdisciplinary inquiry in the Anthropocene, and research design in projects involving Indigenous or minority communities. I loved the participatory design of these sessions: all of them engaged the audience and incorporated our ideas and perspectives into the conversation.

A week later, I am still full of new ideas. I hope events like this will help me ensure that interdisciplinarity does not become a buzzword on my CV, but rather something I continue to think about with care. I also hope I won’t lose this rigor during the long Finnish summer holidays!