What is interdisciplinary?

Interdisciplinarity (also called interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary thinking) means combining knowledge, methods and perspectives from different fields to solve a problem or study a topic that no single discipline can fully explain on its own. It aims to cross the traditional boundaries between disciplines instead of treating each field as an isolated silo.

In practice, interdisciplinary work brings together people with different kinds of expertise so that their combined knowledge produces insights, solutions or innovations that would be hard to reach within one field alone.

Where interdisciplinarity is used

• Research: projects where researchers from different disciplines, for example medicine, technology and social sciences, work together on a shared topic and each contribute their own expertise.
• Teaching: courses or programmes where teachers from different subjects join forces to give students a broader, more versatile view of a topic instead of a single-subject perspective.
• Working life: complex problems such as climate change, public health or product development, which typically require cooperation between several fields of expertise rather than one.

Why it matters

Many real-world problems are too complex or multifaceted for a single discipline to solve on its own. By combining different fields of expertise, interdisciplinary thinking makes it possible to see a problem from several angles at once, question assumptions that are taken for granted within one field, and reach more versatile and workable solutions. This requires openness to other ways of thinking and genuine cooperation between experts, not just working side by side.