Abstract

Interdisciplinarity is one of the cornerstones of Horizon Europe. Bringing together multiple disciplines into one research project might seem logical, necessary and perhaps even easy on paper. In reality, however, interdisciplinary cooperation often proves challenging to implement in practice. Researchers tend to have difficulties seeing the possibilities of their research outside of their academic comfort zone or navigating institutional structures that may impede interdisciplinarity.

These barriers towards interdisciplinarity pose a challenge to research managers as well. How can they help break researchers down disciplinary silos? Can support teams be organised in such a way that they facilitate the collaboration between different disciplines more effectively? And how do they make sure that projects truly leverage the potential that interdisciplinary collaboration offers?

The EU-team at Ghent University has therefore designed various ways of helping researchers overcome their difficulties with interdisciplinarity and of fostering a new interdisciplinary spirit within the research community. We will discuss solutions to common pre-award challenges, share good practices and showcase the first concrete successes that our approach to interdisciplinarity has already yielded. We will do so by highlighting the three main levels on which research managers are confronted with interdisciplinarity.

First of all, the EU-team builds on institutional policies that aim to nurture the interdisciplinary mindset of researchers. Additionally, Ghent University’s strong commitment to advancing the societal impact of research aligns directly with the goals of Horizon Europe. The EU-team taps into those ambitions by setting up networking events, masterclasses and other training activities that help a variety of researchers discover their potential within the European funding landscape. Furthermore, we will show how we embed interdisciplinarity into the organisational structure of the EU-team. The EU-team has thematic experts with a variety of scientific backgrounds. Pre-award research managers work together in duos in order to ensure that topics and projects are approached from several viewpoints. This support structure allows researchers to broaden their gaze and find opportunities that they instinctively might not seize on. In addition, the team has set up community networks per cluster that are open for all researchers to subscribe to and that allow the dissemination of e.g., new work programmes to researchers from a wide range of disciplines. This ultimately translates to the project level and into the strategies the EU-team has set in place to support researchers design and manage their consortia in the most interdisciplinary possible way.

Layered with concrete examples and interactive exchanges with the audience to enhance reflection on the topic, this talk argues that interdisciplinarity is not a mere prerequisite for successful Horizon Europe projects, but that it can also work as an effective strategy for research support. It challenges researchers to look at their research in a different way and to imagine as well as realize new, unconventional and innovative applications for it. This approach has already led to first successes for Ghent University within Horizon Europe. As a result, it offers the unique opportunity to feed forward valuable lessons learned to the wider EARMA community.