Talks

The series of X-Net talks are structured and focused recorded interviews, conducted by X-Net members, to gain information about the personal and professional experiences of interdisciplinarians with different career paths who are at different career points.

We are planning exciting talks to look at interdisciplinary research from different angles, providing a platform for prominent specialists to tell us about their work, their lives and what drives them to pursue their goals in this field. We would like to bring a deeper understanding of the issues affecting interdisciplinarity by the information gathered in these talks for subsequent publication.

In our first X-Net talk we interviewed Prof Ewan Birney (Director EBI, Deputy Director EMBL), our second interviewee was Dr. Alice Pyne (FLF and lecturer at the University of Sheffield) and in the third X-Net talk we interviewed four early career researchers (ECRs) from the universities of Dundee, Edinburgh, and Oxford. The X-Net talks can be watched on the X-Net YouTube channel

DISCLAIMER: The views or opinions expressed by the guest speakers are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of X-Net.

Prof Ewan Birney - Success as an interdisciplinarian.

In science you really have to turn over every stone. You have to think about science from many different angles
Prof Ewan Birney discusses crucial elements for success as an interdisciplinarian.

Recommendations To Funders Andrea Rodriguez

Funders should keep in mind that results will not be produced straight away like in very specific disciplines, it will take more time. Nevertheless, IDR will bring innovative solutions which would not come up from experts in a single discipline
Andrea Rodriguez states the importance of considering extra time when doing interdisciplinary research.

Categorizing IDR Hugh Warden

People are keen on giving you labels, putting you in holes, but this doesn’t necessarily work in IDR, because you are supposed to be working in between groups
Hugh Warden talks about adding labels to interdisciplinarians.

How to put together an IDR team Alice Pyne

My research group is very discipline diverse, with collaborations in academia and industry. Each person brings different ways of looking at problems and critical thinking. I often say that having a breadth of disciplines is like having different colours and we should work together to mix them in a way that makes beautiful weavings
Alic Pyne on how to create an interdisciplinary group

Recommendations To Funders Valentina Spiteri

A lot of funding for early career, and even PI grants are typically what I think of as “Star” orientated: funding one person with one idea. (A) It’s a lot of pressure on the person, and (B) most people can't do it all. Actually having, maybe, even earlier career grants which focus on team science will allow for more interdisciplinary research and take the pressure off people who are training [in the team]. So, funding groups of people rather than predominantly having the “Star” element is maybe the way forward
Valentina Spiteri suggests a different way of funding for interdisciplinary research.