Complexities of COVID-19 Demonstrate the Need for More Interdisciplinary Research Training in Graduate School

This article asks about the current modes of production in human rights research and how they are (or may be) determined by the structures where that knowledge is generated. These questions will be answered by looking at the results of a preliminary study on the reception and subsequent institutionalisation of studies on human rights in stable structures that are dedicated to their research, training and dissemination in Spanish universities. The starting hypothesis is that this institutionalisation causes conceptual, epistemological and methodological biases in the rationales for knowledge construction in the field of human rights that determine and hinder the interdisciplinary approach demanded by its study. Interdisciplinarity has become a dominant aspect of human rights research. The question about how this feature is articulated and who articulates it in the academic institutional framework is pertinent in a field of knowledge that cannot avoid asymmetries in the production and circulation of knowledge. The results show that human rights research has been mainly institutionalised in stable university structures in Spain within the field of legal sciences, with a clear predominance of the area of the Philosophy of Law. It can be concluded that this has been conditioned by the reception and subsequent development of the study of human rights in Spain. While it has been found that the line developed by these centres and research groups has been consolidated and recognised, it can also be confirmed that their modes of knowledge production do not match the rationale of interdisciplinary research. These limitations are not just endogenous. There are some features of Spanish institutional R&D&i culture that make interdisciplinary research on human rights difficult.

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The Norristown Study: An Experiment in Interdisciplinary Research Training. By Sidney Goldstein et al. Foreword by Thomas C. Cochran. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1961. Pp. xxi, 366. $7.50.)

The American Historical Review ◽

10.1086/ahr/69.1.174 ◽

1963 ◽

Keyword(s):

Interdisciplinary Research ◽

Research Training ◽

University Of Pennsylvania

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Four investigators received interdisciplinary research training supplements

Gastroenterology ◽

10.1016/0016-5085(82)90351-1 ◽

1982 ◽

Vol 82 (4) ◽

pp. 824-826

Keyword(s):

Interdisciplinary Research ◽

Research Training

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Interdisciplinary Faith-Learning Integration for Social Change

Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies ◽

10.5840/jis2014261/22 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 29-56

Author(s):

David C. Ward ◽

Keyword(s):

Social Change ◽

Literature Review ◽

Lifelong Learning ◽

Graduate School ◽

Real World ◽

Interdisciplinary Research ◽

Interdisciplinary Studies ◽

Critical Realist ◽

Learning Evaluation ◽

The World

Interdisciplinary studies has grown significantly in the last 25 years. The reductionisms of secular modernism and postmodem relativism present an opportunity for an approach to interdisciplinary faith-learning integration that provides a unifying basis for research addressing major challenges. An approach developed at Oxford Graduate School offers promise for interdisciplinary studies comprehensive enough to bridge the three cultures of the natural, social, and humane sciences in the service of bettering the world. The Learning ... to Change the World methodology proceeds through seven stages: problem clarification, literature review, faith-learning integration, interdisciplinary research, contextualization, ethical/social leadership, and lifelong learning evaluation. Grounded in a Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation metaphysical worldview, it assumes a critical realist epistemology to engage real-world challenges. The process accommodates multiple research methods and aims for a redemptive-ethical transformation of social problems.

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