The “Inter” Within Interdisciplinary Research: Strategies for Building Integration Across Fields

As emphasis on interdisciplinary and convergent research grows, researchers and institutions can benefit from additional insights into how to build interdisciplinary integration within the research process. This article presents signs of successful interdisciplinary research and proposes strategies that researchers can implement to help create and sustain integration across fields. Drawing on the authors’ experiences, other examples from hazards research, and the literature on interdisciplinarity, the article asserts that successful interdisciplinary research incorporates full intellectual participation by each contributing field, forming a multiway partnership. Such work can frame new research questions, develop novel approaches, and generate innovative insights across and within disciplines. It can also address complex questions at the intersections of established fields, beyond what the collection of contributing fields can produce on their own. To build integration across fields, researchers can use strategies such as interweaving perspectives in the research foci, interacting regularly at the working level, and interconnecting knowledge and ideas throughout the research process. Another strategy is leadership that enables contributions from multiple fields and empowers interdisciplinary synthesis. During the research process, researcher commitment, curiosity, willingness to take risks, and flexibility are also important, along with patience and persistence as challenges arise.