Using creative methods to explore interdisciplinarity

Research team

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Unlock

disruptive

reciprocity

unexpected

ideas changed together

no clear ‘lead’

only each other.

Overview and Aims

Recognising that today’s most pressing concerns cannot be addressed through any single disciplinary lens, inter-disciplinarity – alongside creativity and collaboration – ranks high on research agendas and funding calls. However, despite extensive literature on the topic, inter-disciplinarity remains conceptually vague, often riddled with ambiguity and difficulty. There is a need to understand what inter-disciplinarity means in practice and how we might explore it anew in unfamiliar, perhaps surprising ways; ways which might resist conventional presentation and dissemination.

This research asks:

• How do researchers and university professionals articulate and conceptualise inter-disciplinarity?
• How do creative methods and arts-based interventions shape inter-disciplinary practices in research contexts?
• What can we learn about inter-disciplinary practices through approaches and techniques such as poetry, cartooning, and collage?

The objectives of the research are to offer new conceptual and methodological tools for understanding and practicing inter-disciplinary research. Making use of creative methods, and drawing upon scholarship from Science and Technology Studies, this research positions inter-disciplinarity as pioneering and disruptive rather than merely integrative.

Approach

The research project involved the design and delivery of Creative Club, a series of workshops for researchers and university professionals to come together over poetry, collage, and other creative media. Combining ethnographic observation with semi-structured interviews, the fieldwork investigated the way arts-based techniques influenced knowledge-making practices, and what this entails for inter-disciplinary projects and research. In keeping with the exploration of arts-based approaches, analysis took the form of data-poems, graphic panels, and zines.

Ethnographic observations in comic-form – pencil, ink and digital media – by Rebecca Edgerley

Sign-posting to Creative Club workshop, image credit Rebecca Edgerley.

Initial findings suggest that the use of creative methods and arts-based approaches can:

• Develop shared languages and concepts for inter-disciplinary work; speaking a “different disciplinary language” need not be a barrier, as is often assumed.
• Enable affective spaces, where people can express the emotional aspects of their research and connect with others; an important foundation for inter-disciplinary working.
• Give people something new to know; encouraging engagement with the unfamiliar is as important for creativity as it is for inter-disciplinary practice.

Next Steps

Rebecca is currently writing up her thesis. Alongside this, she is working collaboratively with colleagues in the RENEW Early Career and Postgraduate Researcher community to develop a critical reflection piece on their experiences of inter-disciplinarity within the project.

Being inter-disciplinary, being creative, being ruderal

The project invokes the metaphor of ruderal, referring to tenacious plant species that thrive in disturbed areas, such as bindweed. Inter-disciplinarity arises and thrives within the cracks and disturbance of disciplines. Just as many ruderal plants are vital to the restoration of increasingly depleted landscapes, inter-disciplinarity is crucial to knowledge-making in times of increasing uncertainty. 

Bindweed, pencil, by Rebecca Edgerley

Conferences

(2025) ‘Call me by my name | ekphrastic writing for legal discourse’, Critical Legal Conference. University of Exeter, 04 – 06 September. Workshop.

(2025) ‘Disturbing practices | inter-disciplinarity, creativity, and the liminal’, 7^th Nordic STS Conference. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, 10 – 13 June. Panel presentation.

(2024) ‘Dancing across difference | exploring inter-disciplinarity through creative methods’, Sustainability, Imagination and Aesthetics. University of Surrey, 26 – 27 June. Panel presentation.

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