Date/Time
01/06/2016
10:00 am - 5:30 pm
Location
Categories
Calendars
Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University are pleased to announce this workshop which will examine how interdisciplinary research can enable researchers to achieve deeper impact for their work. The event, funded by the Irish Research Council’s Creative Connections workshop initiative will take place on Wednesday the 1st of June from 10.00-17.30 in the Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin. Register on EVENTBRITE.
Interdisciplinary research (IDR) is the focus of much debate among researchers, higher education institutes, funding agencies and governments across the world who are looking at whether they should invest in IDR and if so, how to do so effectively.
There are arguments for and against interdisciplinary research but one striking aspect is the impact interdisciplinary research can achieve. In the recent REF UK exercise, 80% of the research case studies that were submitted to show significant impact were interdisciplinary in nature. Notwithstanding that, many attempts at interdisciplinary research fail to produce meaningful outputs and collaboration is often characterised by a shallow process of engagement, with temporary cross-disciplinary consortia and highly siloed project structures.
This workshop will seek to provide examples of a more equal, sustainable approach. The agenda will showcase a number of exemplars of ‘translational humanities’ research. These exemplars will reflect successful and established interdisciplinary collaboration that have existed to date between staff across the humanities/STEM interface in both TCD and DCU. These ‘translational humanities’ exemplars address the notion of how engaging in genuinely reciprocal interdisciplinary research can answer the research questions of the different disciplinary groupings, as well as common, truly interdisciplinary research questions. This can lead to the generation of deeper and longer standing impact than would be possible for researchers working in isolation. The experience of the speakers representing the ‘translational humanities’ exemplars will help generate learnings that will be useful to a number of different actors across the Higher Education and Research sector no matter what their disciplinary background. Similarly the break out session in the afternoon will also be of relevance to individuals from all disciplinary backgrounds and will offer attendees an opportunity to discuss aspects of Arts, Humanities and Social Science research that have relevance for other research areas for examples issues such as sex and gender considerations, ethics and cultural studies.
The event will demonstrate practical learnings that can be replicated by:
a) Researchers of all disciplinary backgrounds from Irish Higher Education Institutions (HEI) wishing to initiate collaboration across methodological, disciplinary, and institutional boundaries;
b) Representatives from offices of Irish HEI’s Vice Presidents for Research interested in learning more about encouraging, supporting, funding and managing interdisciplinary research in their own institutional settings;
c) Funding bodies seeking to align and support the research agenda for interdisciplinarity.
Event Programme – Click here for full programme
Morning Session: The morning session will take the form of a plenary style event and confirmed speakers include:
- Professor Catherine Lyall, University of Edinburgh
- Professor John Thompson, Director for the Centre of Collaborative Research, Queens University Belfast
- Dr. Jennifer Edmond, a Trinity College Representative from the TCD ‘Digital Humanities’ research theme and the coordinator of the FP7 funded CENDARI project
- Mr Declan McKibben, Head of Design and Innovation, SFI ADAPT centre
- Ms Niamh Brennan, Research Manager in the Research Informatics Unit in TCD
Afternoon Session: The afternoon session will involve a structured collective discussion activity led by the audience, inspired by the morning session. The audience will break out into 5-6 smaller groups each focused on areas of Arts and Humanities research that has relevance for other research areas. Some of the areas to be discussed will be decided by a popular vote by participants 3-4 weeks before the event. Further information about this vote will be communicated to participants who register on the EVENTBRITE page one month before the workshop.
Poster Session: The purpose of the poster session will be to give early stage researchers engaging in IDR across the AHSS/STEM divide an opportunity to showcase their research to the wider workshop audience during the lunch break.
The organising committee for the workshop includes the following representatives from TCD and DCU.
- Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, Director, Trinity Long Room Hub, Arts and Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin
- Professor Andy Way, Deputy Director, ADAPT
- Ms Doris Alexander, Research Manager, Research Development Office, Trinity College Dublin
- Dr. Alex O’Connor, Lecturer in Computer Science, Dublin City University
- Ms Maureen Burgess, Research Programme Officer, Trinity Long Room Hub
Event Hastag: #IDRforImpact