Interdisciplinarité

Interdisciplinarité, or interdisciplinarity, is an approach that integrates concepts, theories, methods, and insights from two or more disciplines to address questions or problems that cannot be adequately understood within a single discipline. It seeks a synthesis that transcends disciplinary boundaries and produces new frameworks of understanding.

Unlike multidisciplinary work, where specialists work in parallel and share results, interdisciplinarity aims at integrating knowledge across disciplines to generate novel insights. Related terms include cross-disciplinarity or pluridisciplinarité; transdisciplinarity extends further by incorporating non-academic stakeholders and real-world contexts into the knowledge-creation process.

Historically, interest in interdisciplinarity grew with the rise of complexity science, sustainability, and policy-oriented research in the late 20th century. Institutions and funders increasingly encouraged cross-cutting teams, joint curricula, and collaborative projects to address multifaceted problems that resist single-discipline explanations.

Practices of interdisciplinarity include mixed-methods research, co-design of projects, integrated curricula, and collaborative problem solving. Evaluation and outcomes emphasize integrative outputs such as new theories, comprehensive syntheses, or actionable policy recommendations, rather than discipline-specific metrics alone.

Applications span numerous fields, including environmental studies, public health, urban planning, education, cognitive science, and data science. Examples include climate models that incorporate social science factors, or health interventions that blend medicine with sociology and behavioral science.

Benefits of interdisciplinarity often include enhanced explanatory power, innovation, and greater relevance to real-world problems. Challenges include epistemological tensions between disciplines, methodological incompatibilities, higher resource demands, risk of superficial integration, and difficulties in publishing or funding within traditional disciplinary silos.