Interdisciplinarity and Innovation

Description

The third in the series of AHRC workshops on Creativity and Innovation

Programme and Registration
Please see the link on the right hand side of the page to view the programme. You can also register online by clicking on the Online Registration link.  There is a flat rate charge of £7.50 for each workshop.

As institutions come under pressure from new educational and social paradigms, innovation within the educational economy takes the form of disciplinary innovation. What counts as knowledge? For instance, film and IT have transformed both content and forms of educational instruction. Changing practices of knowledge production bring into question disciplinary boundaries and emphasise the subject as well as object of knowledge. The third and final workshop will examine disciplinary change as a driver for innovation and institutional transformation.

Knowledge is produced in a wide range of contexts within and beyond universities, including practice-based research. It often involves organisations or individuals linked by networks rather than institutions (Gibbons et al, The New Production of Knowledge, 1994). Universities of the future will have to create platforms for such networks while staking out new space for themselves in the marketplace of ideas. The interdisciplinary Humanities Centre or programme provides one paradigm for disciplinary innovation. But the transfer of knowledge between disciplines does not necessarily guarantee innovation.  What models are needed to facilitate disciplinary innovation and how does disciplinary innovation relate to institutional changes in Arts and Humanities research?           

Questions to be posed include:

•    What forms of innovation and creativity are linked to disciplinary change in the Arts and Humanities?

•    What is the impact of innovation and creativity on institutional practices of learning and teaching?

•    How are bodies of knowledge and methods of understanding themselves transformed through disciplinary innovation?

•    What organisational or institutional models facilitate disciplinary innovation?

•    How do we best encourage and support innovation in academic and practice-based research?

 Speakers include:

Alan Blackwell    
Scott deLahunta
Nina Holm Vohnsen   
Juan Mateos-Garcia   
Jane Rendell       
Laura Watts           

 Please address  administrative enquiries to mm405@cam.ac.uk.