Disciplinary Boundaries Research Articles

Integration of Indigenous Research Methodologies, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and molecular scatology in an assessment of mesocarnivore presence, diet and habitat use on Yurok Ancestral Lands.

Partnerships between Tribes and researchers in wildlife monitoring and application of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) have taken a variety of forms, and some scholars have noted a need for culturally sensitive approaches. Guided by Indigenous Research Methodologies, this research is coupled with Yurok TEK, or hlkelonah 'ue-megetohl ('to take care of the earth'), enabling an applied, culturally sensitive approach in partnership with the Yurok Tribe. We present results from a molecular scatology study of wildlife within the ancestral territory of the Yurok Tribe. Scats were collected opportunistically on road transects. All samples (N = 132) were analysed via DNA barcoding and results matched to documented 'Oohl 'we-toh (Yurok language) names to determine the depositor species (N = 8). Though there were four focal mesocarnivore species in our study, only bobcat (Chmuuek; Lynx rufus) and gray fox (Wergers; Urocyon cinereoargenteus) were detected as depositor species. Post hoc analyses were conducted to explore distribution, habitat use and selection in a use-availability context, and food habits of these two species. We found almost complete separation of bobcat and gray fox use of transects, as well as indication of partitioning of vegetation cover types and food. We demonstrate an integrated framework of Western and Indigenous sciences that allows the Indigenous researcher to transcend structured academic disciplinary boundaries. Our approach can be modified for partnerships between Tribes, agencies, academics and students for wildlife monitoring in broader geographic regions in various research applications.

StudyWell: a co-design project for enhancing student mental health and wellbeing through service design and relational welfare

AbstractStudents mental health is declining. StudyWell is a project aiming at positive impact on student mental health in student cities in Norway; by integrating relational welfare with service design, and the study environment as a starting point. We discussfour implementation challenges: First, co-design depends on a shared mindset across disciplinary boundaries. Secondly, balancing the lenses of individuals, community, system and future require facilitation. Thirdly, societal impact requires continuous partner anchoring. Finally, approaches must not further pathologize university student.

What qualitative systems mapping is and what it could be: integrating and visualizing diverse knowledge of complex problems

Researchers in sustainability science deal with increasingly complex problems that cross administrative, geographical, disciplinary, and sectoral boundaries, and are characterized by high stakes and deep uncertainties. This in turn creates methodological challenges to frame, structure, and solve complex problems in science and practice. There is a long tradition in visualizing systems as diagrams, and concept and cognitive maps, but there is insufficient differentiation and comparison between these methods and no clear umbrella term has yet been established. Against this background, we systematically review three foundational methods from different academic disciplines—causal diagrams, concept mapping, and cognitive mapping. Comparing and contrasting them, we facilitate a coherent understanding of qualitative systems mapping (QSM) as an umbrella term. We then proceed to explore the evident intersections between these methods to showcase some of the inter- and transdisciplinary opportunities and challenges crystallizing in integrated QSM approaches. Finally, we share case study insights from the food–water–biodiversity nexus in Austria and elaborate on some of the methodological nuances to data integration in QSM. Overall, with this overview paper, we lay the groundwork for a systematic, transparent, and yet flexible development and application of QSM methods to support mixed-methods research design and clear case study documentation, as well as fostering effective inter- and transdisciplinary communication in sustainability science. Further research needs to explore these QSM applications in depth across alternative sustainability science contexts, particularly with respect to efficient and rigorous protocols for knowledge and data integration vis-a-vis complex problems and transdisciplinary research processes.

에도시대 두창의 예방과 치료: 인두법의 수용을 중심으로

This paper explores the introduction of smallpox variolation (人痘法) as a means of addressing the smallpox epidemic during the Edo period in Japan. It also investigates the impact of smallpox variolation on Japanese society during the late Edo period. I begin by outlining the history of smallpox epidemics in Japan. Subsequently, I document the process of introducing and developing smallpox variolation, which was considered a valuable preventive measure against smallpox during that period. While smallpox variolation was introduced in the mid-18th century, it took about half a century for the practice to be effectively implemented. Several physicians attempted variolation during this period, but Ogata Shunsaku (緖方春朔) was renowned as the first to succeed on a large scale, particularly with children. He authored works such as “Shutohissunben (種痘必順辨)” to advocate for the effectiveness of variolation. Additionally, rather than simply adopting the Chinese method of variolation, he developed his own method that took into consideration Japan's unique climate and environment, hoping to enhance the efficacy of variolation. During that time, the prevailing response to the smallpox epidemic focused on diagnosis and treatment using medicine rather than variolation. While Ogata Shunsaku actively practiced variolation, the shogunate established an institution within the medical department tasked with the prevention and treatment of smallpox. This institution propagated the Ikeda-ryu (池田流) method, which specialized in diagnosing and treating smallpox. Despite disparities in approaches, competition between smallpox prevention and treatment catalyzed the accumulation of relevant medical knowledge and experience in Japan during the early 19th century. Initially, variolation was introduced from China; however, over time, researchers experimented with it in various ways, integrating knowledge from Rangaku (蘭學) and cowpox inoculation (牛痘法). Responding to academic and technical developments, Ranpoi (蘭方醫) made diverse attempts at variolation that served as precursors to the eventual adoption of cowpox inoculation. Examining the process of variolation’s introduction and implementation elucidates the characteristics of early 19th-century Japanese medicine that transcended disciplinary boundaries.

Co-creating Sustainability Science Communication Through Aesthetic Formats: This is What a Transdisciplinary Moment Looks Like

Sustainability science calls for new methodologies and collaborations that go beyond disciplinary boundaries. This points to a new role for sustainability science communication. Here, we explore how science communication can employ aesthetic formats (e.g., storytelling, performance, artistic installations) to promote transdisciplinary collaborations. We conducted a series of experiments in a master-level science communication course at the University of Copenhagen, engaging students, practitioners and researchers in experimental collaborations and qualitative data collection. Through thematic analysis of classroom observations and interviews, five elements of transdisciplinarity emerged: Acknowledgement of disciplinary identities, negotiation of diverse vocabularies, disruption of hierarchical structures, experience of novel insights and evident learning processes among participants. These moments challenged direct observation but became discernible through post hoc analysis. We suggest they constitute a sequence that together describes a transdisciplinary moment. We thus conclude that the aesthetic formats we employed were instrumental in disrupting conventional boundaries and enhancing collaboration across disciplines. However, we also acknowledge the complexities of achieving transdisciplinary moments and emphasize the importance of reflective practice.

Environmental Governance Networks and Geography: A Research Agenda at the Confluence of Critical Concepts for Navigating Rapid Environmental Change

Social networks are foundational to modern environmental governance, and particularly influential in supporting societal navigation of rapid environmental change. Social network science crosses disciplinary boundaries and provides theoretical and methodological tools to predict and assess relationships between network characteristics, structures, and the diffusion of information and innovations critical to navigating environmental governance challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Most network studies examine networks that operate at a particular spatial scale, and research questions often rest on the relationships between simple network structures and characteristics of individual network actors and their associations. Geographers are poised to further develop theory underlying social network science specifically relevant to navigating human–environment governance challenges by disentangling the influences of scale, place, and identity in network studies. In this article, we advance the concept of environmental governance networks as multiscale, multilevel, and multi-identity social networks formed organically in response to environmental governance challenges. We propose that geographers are well positioned to expose the socially constructed nature of environmental governance networks as barriers and opportunities for societal navigation of rapid environmental change by explicitly theorizing critical influences across time, space, place, levels of social organization, and the multiple roles and social identities individual network actors hold. We develop a research agenda that leverages geographic theory to expand network science questions relative to concepts such as network proximity, affiliation, interaction, and intra-individual roles and identities to better understand the position and potential of environmental governance networks as a social structure for navigating rapid environmental change.

Designing Writing Across the Professions (WAP) programs at the intersection of work-integrated learning and writing transfer research

In our information age, written communication has become increasingly important in many professions. As a result, university faculty and administrators need to develop specific curricula and pedagogies that will facilitate the process of equipping students with the required writing knowledge and skills to meet the demands of their workplace environments. In this article, we argue that Writing Across the Professions (WAP) as a curricular model meets that requirement, particularly in Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) contexts, which we believe are conducive to fostering writing transfer in university students. WAP foregrounds the importance of writing in workplace contexts and aims to facilitate the transfer of students’ knowledge and practices by focusing on rhetorical genre theory and analysis, discourse community theory and analysis, providing engaged feedback on students’ writing, and inviting students to critically reflect on their previous and current writing knowledge and practices. In this article, we propose four conceptual foundations that university faculty and administrators can utilize to implement WAP programs at their institutions. The first concept is that professional (writing) knowledge and practices are contextual and require lifelong learning; WIL faculty and students thus need to be informed about what is involved in learning to write across professions. Secondly, as the transfer of professional (writing) knowledge and practices goes beyond disciplinary boundaries, both faculty and students need to build contextual awareness. Thirdly, as problem-solving is an integral part of writing in the professions, faculty and students need to engage in critical reflection. Finally, professional (writing) knowledge and practices impact identities and therefore require mentoring. In outlining these shared concepts from WIL and writing transfer research, this article offers examples of how they can inform curricular approaches and pedagogical practices in WAP.

Future-making through eventing human-machine listening

Reverb-Resonate: Sounding the Affective Frequencies of Migration operates at the intersection of art, science, and technology to articulate an emotional landscape of migration and exile. Rooted in the methodology of research-creation (RC) and grounded in the interdisciplinary field of Art, Science, and Technology Studies (ASTS), the project transcends conventional disciplinary boundaries to offer speculative possibilities through human-machine listening. Drawing on the body is an already augmented site, the project makes audible physiological sensors that capture micro-level intricacies responsible for stress regulation. Listening, is, thus, foregrounded as the core public engagement strategy, creating a layered sound collage that interweaves somatic registers of recorded breathing samples and physiological sensor values with machine listening to recreate new forms of sound. Engagement with ASTS is, hence, in the form of a method that traverses transforming sensor application, generating technicized sound and composing an acoustic experience capable of affective engagement. Through machine learning—a subfield of artificial intelligence—the notion of ‘machine listening’ extends beyond human hearing limitations, introducing non-normative structures to challenge and expand habitual forms of human listening. Reverb-Resonate, hence, leverages artistic strategies and techno-augmentations to address the crisis of imagination that hinders opening up to realities far from the familiar and the personal to imagine ‘what could be’ as a way of future-making. It underscores the critical edge of RC and ASTS in addressing complex critical issues, proposing a speculative space where the human-machine hybrid puts forth a socio-technical assemblage of listening to understand 'otherly' experiences. The project, thus, advances a critical inquiry into the mediation and augmentation of listening to imagine new possibilities for embodied engagement with unfamiliar emotional spaces and experiences.

Toward a Queer and (Trans)Formative Methodology for Rhetoric of Health and Medicine: Institutional Critique

This article argues that the field of rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM) needs queer and (trans)formative methodologies to support a disempowered, ignored, and devalued queer community. Building directly from Mohan J. Dutta’s (2022) work, the article 1) addresses that RHM scholarly practices attend to whiteness and neglect to amplify queer and transgender interventional and rhetorical approaches; 2) develops a methodology–institutional critique–for RHM practitioners that crosses disciplinary boundaries to showcase cistematic oppression at infrastructural, structural, institutional, and interpersonal levels; and 3) provides a personal medical story that showcases how institutions fail transgender and queer patients. Through this work, this article argues for the need for rhetorical methodological intervention in RHM research and to mobilize transgender rhetorical agency through coalitional building.

From classrooms to cyberspace: Understanding pedagogical approaches and outcomes in Metaverse learning environments

In recent years, the educational landscape has undergone a seismic shift propelled by the emergence of Metaverse learning environments. This transformative phenomenon has sparked widespread interest and prompted scholars to delve deeper into its intricacies. Our research plans to meticulously explore and comprehend the diverse pedagogical methodologies adopted within these cyberspatial realms, focusing on unravelling their outcomes and educational implications. As we embark on this scholarly journey, we recognize the need to contextualize the evolution from traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms to the dynamic expanse of cyberspace. This transition marks a shift in the physical setting and a fundamental reimagining of educational paradigms. Thus, our study endeavours to trace this trajectory, shedding light on the nuanced interplay between pedagogy, technology, and learning outcomes within Metaverse environments. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, we aim to dissect the multifaceted nature of Metaverse learning, transcending disciplinary boundaries to gain a comprehensive understanding. This entails delving into these digital realms' immersive and collaborative dimensions, exploring how they shape the educational experience and foster innovative pedagogical practices. Moreover, our research seeks to uncover the transformative potential inherent in metaverse learning environments. By critically analyzing their affordances and limitations, we aim to offer insights into how these digital platforms can revolutionize education, paving the way for a more inclusive, engaging, and practical learning experience. In essence, our study aspires to contribute to the ongoing discourse surrounding the future of education in the digital age. By interrogating the complexities of Metaverse learning through a rigorous scholarly lens, we endeavour to chart a path forward that harnesses the full potential of these emerging technologies for the betterment of education.

Prototypes as catalysts for cross-disciplinary collaboration: Viewpoints from applied food research and innovation

BackgroundPrototypes play a central role in applied food research and innovation (R&I), serving as the initial representations of new products, process, or project ideas. They function as "boundary objects", facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue, knowledge creation, and cooperation. Despite their significance, challenges arise due to the differing perspectives and creative behaviors of scientists in this field. This commentary addresses the question of how prototypes can foster collaboration across disciplines in applied food R&I. Scope and approachOur study explores the application of prototypes within the disciplines of innovation management, consumer and sensory science, and food science and technology. We provide an overview of the diverse roles of prototypes in the R&I process and elucidate their function of bridging interdisciplinary gaps and facilitating knowledge exchange. Furthermore, we analyze the use of prototypes across those disciplines, emphasizing their role as communication facilitators and mutual learning tools. Key findings and conclusionsWhile prototypes are indispensable in applied food R&I, they are predominantly employed in distinct phases according to the discipline, with a lack of interdisciplinary collaboration. However, we observed that prototypes often serve similar purposes across disciplines. Thus, we propose a wider integration of prototyping into research processes, to facilitate communication, improve mutual learning and knowledge exchange, and make research outputs easily transferable. Experienced facilitators should holistically manage diverse prototypes, fostering an iterative project model that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Our commentary emphasizes the transformative potential of prototypes advocating for their informed usage across disciplines to advance cross-disciplinary collaboration and align research outcomes with societal needs, thus supporting responsible applied food R&I.

The role of analytical models and their circulation in urban studies and policy

Cities are so complex that we constantly build models to represent them, understand them and attempt to plan them. Models represent a middle ground between the singular configurations of cities and universal theories. This is what makes them valuable and prone to circulate (between places, institutions and languages) and evolve to adapt to new ideas, local conditions and/or other models. When it comes to analytical urban models (i.e. analytical representations of cities developed to study or simulate part of their structure or dynamics), there is a lack of academic understanding regarding how context and circulation affect their content, use and interpretation. What happens to analytical urban models and their reception during their circulation across geographical and disciplinary boundaries? How have different academic disciplines interacted with, contributed to and been influenced by analytical urban models? What are the consequences of urban models’ mobility for our understanding of cities? In this article, we employ the policy mobilities framework to analyse the circulation of analytical urban models. We use six canonical models as case studies to determine how their assumptions came about and how these models have circulated across different domains of policy and application by using biographical information and model analysis. The first contribution of the article is to demonstrate by example that our hypothesis regarding the influence of context is consistent. We also show that highly transferable/mobile models share common characteristics relating to contingent factors such as their creators’ biographies, institutional context and the traditional markers of power relations.

Using large‐scale bibliometric data in higher education research: Methodological implications from three studies

AbstractAll fields of knowledge are challenged to adopt newer, more sophisticated methodologies to cope with growing complexity. Phenomena under study require further multidisciplinary and mixed methods collaborations to achieve expertise able to improve research strategies and practices. Furthermore, traditional methodological approaches face limits to their analytical reach. Here, we demonstrate opportunities from adopting newer, more sophisticated methodologies in the field of higher education (HE) research by comparing three case studies. We argue that such methods and data innovate the mapping and understanding of global HE. These studies uncover novel field characterizations, enabled via analysis of tens of thousands of HE authors and articles over several decades to assess how journal publication, topics, and levels of analysis (individual, organizational, and system) have evolved. Our results imply that to better understand the future of HE worldwide and to address growing challenges, newer methodological directions and data sources will be key to facilitate more comprehensive examinations of the globalizing field. However, our analysis also highlights the technical and learning challenges in implementing these methodologies; thus, we argue for the need to promote more sophisticated methodological training of current and future generations of HE researchers as well as strengthened collaborations across disciplinary, methodological, and cultural boundaries.

B(l)ending research methods: Reimagining a theoretical turn in fashion scholarship

Aiming to disrupt the way fashion studies is developed – often from a Eurocentric approach and within rigid disciplinary, methodological and social boundaries – this Special Issue invites different scholars to present their own way of studying and exploring fashion, but also to make their familiar methods strange, re-assessing what fashion means and what it means to do fashion research in the first place. Promoting an interdisciplinary dialogue, the articles in this Special Issue show how fashion studies would benefit from ‘bending’ existing methodological boundaries and blending cross-disciplinary methodologies, conceptual orientations, objects, ideas, forms, subjects and questions in their epistemological approach. We hope that the curation, organization and general assemblage of the texts give rise to the intellectual alchemy of unpredictable encounters: conversations, clashes and contradictions. From article to article, readers will encounter different ways of doing research on and through fashion and be inspired to imagine more divergent epistemologies of fashion.

Barriers to Multidisciplinary Team Approach in End-of-life Decision-making: Insights from an Indian Hospital

A common perception about multidisciplinary team (MDT) approach is that it improves the quality of care to hospitalised patients. However, there is paucity of information on the challenges in implementing such an approach in end-of-life care (eolc). Conducted in a multispecialty hospital in Kolkata (India), the present study explores barriers to MDT functioning in the context of ‘eolc’. The study finds the MDT approach fails to live up to its rhetoric. One of the major challenges is a professional boundary that inevitably arises in MDTs. Due to this, specialist physicians fail to overcome disciplinary boundaries to make consensus end-of-life decisions. Moreover, in the physician-dominant medical team, where nurses and other non-clinical caregivers’ roles are marginalised, holistic caregiving is compromised. The hospital environment is also not conducive to multidisciplinary teamwork. Application of a disease-specific treatment protocol in ‘eolc’ cases jeopardises team coordination, adversely affects ‘eolc’ referrals and disrupts care transfers. Dying patients and their families are especially affected by such discordant care. Based on the findings, the study suggests that while team approach is imperative to effective ‘eolc’, there is a need to shift focus from multidisciplinary to transdisciplinary approach to enhance care integration and patient-centric care to terminally ill patients.

Traversing Disciplinary Boundaries, Globalizing Indigeneities

Abstract The author’s work spans the disciplinary boundaries of political science, Middle East studies, Indigenous studies, and their subfields. Broadly situated within critical theoretical bodies of knowledge, she focuses on an Indigenous nation in what is today known as Iraq. Her work is grounded within particular and fragmented locations that blur various lines and multiple layers of coloniality. This article offers a critical reflection of the invisibility in working on Indigeneity in southwest Asia within the structural imperatives of the academy. It takes up each of these themes by examining the fields of international relations and Iraqi studies to show how the story of Assyrians is invisible or unintelligible across these fields of political science and Middle East studies. Moreover, what the Assyrian story tells us about these disciplines and the multiplicity of coloniality (Patel 2019) is also rendered invisible. Despite the absence of Assyrians from Indigenous studies, the author sees this field as a site from which to potentially globalize Indigeneities. Specifically, she uses Indigenous feminism to construct a more nuanced framework into Assyrian histories, a framework that uses the lens of colonialism, land theft, erasure, and genocide to reframe the Assyrian experience as a remnant of the colonial global order.

Coding and Computational Thinking Across the Curriculum: A Review of Educational Outcomes

Teaching coding and computational thinking is an emerging educational imperative, now embedded in compulsory curriculum in the United States, Finland, the UK, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Australia. This meta-synthesis of 49 studies critically reviews recent international research (2009–2022) of coding and computational thinking as core and integrated across the curriculum. It addresses four essential problems: (a) What are the key features of learning environments that successfully develop students’ coding and computational thinking? (b) What is the impact of student engagement in coding and computational thinking on learning outcomes across curriculum areas? (c) What pedagogical constraints are evident for coding and computational thinking, including across curriculum areas? and (d) Which conceptual frameworks support coding and computational thinking, and what has been marginalized or excluded? The review advances knowledge of coding and computational thinking—vital to guide and develop future AI-based solutions to real-world problems that challenge disciplinary boundaries.

Refugee livelihood perspectives: Post-traumatic growth in histories of Vietnamese, Bosnian, and Tamil Refugees in Australia

Abstract Refugee livelihood studies have mostly focused on policy and international aid programming and have yet to explore refugee people’s long-term development beyond the initial resettlement period. This article examines the experiences of Vietnamese, Bosnian, and Tamil refugees resettled in Australia during the height of the multicultural agenda in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on fifty oral histories, the article argues that refugees’ struggle and transformation of trauma in the past fuelled civic engagement in their new host communities. It explores the nexus of refugee lived experiences, livelihoods, and post-traumatic growth in the context of multicultural Australia to consider refugee livelihood as a long-term process. Crossing disciplinary boundaries of history and psychology, the article shows how some refugees re-interpret their trauma as motivation for positive change, a manifestation of post-traumatic growth, expressed as civic engagement, including becoming political actors in response to their histories of trauma, resistance, and growth beyond resettlement.

Using Infographics to Go Public with SoTL

There has been a call to amplify the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and expand its reach by engaging with audiences outside the academy. In this paper, we share our journey in crossing disciplinary boundaries and creating a SoTL-informed infographic for public consumption. As the field of SoTL continues to evolve, infographics hold tremendous potential to communicate SoTL to various stakeholders, including educators, students, administrators, policymakers, and the public. We outline best practices in infographic development and the potential of infographics as a tool for taking SoTL public, emphasizing their visual appeal and effectiveness in conveying complex information. We conclude by discussing the implications of using infographics to advance SoTL communication. The efforts of our group serve as a valuable example of how infographics can be used to bring SoTL knowledge out of academia and into the public domain.

The Human Settlement: Erwin Anton Gutkind's fascination with Africa and critique of modern design

ABSTRACT In the immediate aftermath of the devastation and frustration of the Second World war, several architects and planners in Europe and North America took on the task of expanding their disciplinary boundaries and providing accounts of ‘others’. As they investigated various understandings of human life and the social dimension of the built environment, the interest shifted from the paradigms of modern design to the complexity of distant cultures and the variety beyond the Western tradition. Among those who challenged narrow perspectives was Erwin Anton Gutkind, a planner, architect, and theorist of German origin. Examining his unpublished manuscript, entitled The Human Settlement, and its long chapter on Africa, this article demonstrates how Gutkind pushed the theoretical and geographical limits of the historical research on architecture of his time to develop a project that offered a strong critique of modernist attitudes, internationalist models, and nation-state narratives. The essay also reflects on both Gutkind's exposure of colonial and neocolonial strategies of modernization and westernization on the continent and his problematic representation of local and non-colonial architecture in Africa. The manuscript's merits and limits reveal the significant friction that arose between Gutkind's strategies for including underrepresented voices and his reliance on biased perspectives.