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"Several factors have driven interdisciplinarity’s current revivification, including an emphasis on holistic approaches to problem-solving which break down rigid disciplinary siloes; a desire to create a global community of scholars centred on altruistic urges; and the meteoric rise in AI, whose systemic pull across all fields forces us to think and work across disciplines."
Professor Christine Gerrard, Director of TORCH
What is driving the new ‘interdisciplinary turn’? As Director of TORCH, an interdisciplinary research centre based in Oxford’s Humanities Division, my frequent conversations with global counterparts oscillate between gloom over global crises and excitement over our new interdisciplinary initiatives. These two subjects are closely related.
As universities worldwide pledge to renew their civic mission and scale up their societal impact, they increasingly pin their faith on interdisciplinary research as the ‘magic bullet’ to solve major global challenges such as climate crisis, democratic stability and global health inequity.