Heads Together
By Gia Scafidi
Encouraging a “non-traditional” approach to academic research, an
emerging program at USC emphasizes the power of collaboration. Through
the university’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research (CIR),
established in 2002 by Provost Lloyd Armstrong Jr. Professors combine
expertise on projects that cut across traditional disciplinary
boundaries.
Each academic year, six tenured or tenure-track faculty members are
selected to receive up to $50,000 in research funding to work full-time
initiating or advancing creative interdisciplinary projects, such as a
project proposal for federal or foundation funding or a book.
Twelve CIR fellows have been appointed thus far—many from USC
College—and it is clear that interdisciplinary research means very
different things to different professors.
Shrikanth Narayanan, an associate professor of electrical engineering,
linguistics and computer science, enjoys interdisciplinary research
involving many people. This way, “the same problem can be viewed from
different angles,” he says. Narayanan has focused his CIR project on
creating information and communication technologies for children.
“Universality in communications is one of our goals,” says Narayanan,
whose fellowship involves linguists, psychologists, communication
specialists, engineers and mathematicians.
Former CIR fellows Vanessa Schwartz and Timur Kuran, for example,
incorporate “interdisciplinarity” into their work but maintain a
“one-person band approach.”
“Although I am an historian, I use the methods and materials that
people in other disciplines traditionally use,” says Schwartz, an
associate professor of history in the College.
Schwartz’s fellowship project—a book examining the relationship of film
to ideas of “nation-ness” in France and America in the 1950s—stems from
the intersection of history, art history, film studies and French
studies.
Kuran, a professor of economics and law, has set out to identify the
social mechanisms that caused the Islamic Middle East, once considered
economically advanced, to turn into an underdeveloped region.
Drawing on law, economics, history, sociology, political science and
cultural studies, he focuses his efforts on explaining the role that
Islamic law played in preventing the Middle East from keeping up with
economic modernization in Western Europe.
“I've always considered the established disciplines of the social
sciences unduly confining when it comes to addressing big issues,” says
Kuran, who holds the King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture
at USC. “Anyone who is serious about studying a major social issue must
be prepared to ignore the prevailing boundaries among established
academic disciplines.”
Adds historian Schwartz,“ but this is not to discount disciplinary
knowledge. Without it, you would not have interdisciplinarity. It’s
like cross-fertilization. How did Mendel make a better pea?”
Still, interdisciplinary research faces major challenges in the
academic world. Such as young faculty who are interested in
interdisciplinary research, but worry it puts them at risk of not
getting promoted or published in journals.
But from the sound of its supporters, the interdisciplinary approach is here to stay.
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