From Friction to Flourishing: Navigating the risks, rewards and long-term advantages of interdisciplinary research

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

Interdisciplinary research is often praised for its potential to address ‘big picture’ problems and complex challenges, yet the academic structures in which it operates are not designed to support it easily.

Interdisciplinary research is often praised for its potential to address ‘big picture’ problems and complex challenges, yet the academic structures in which it operates are not designed to support it easily. This talk, grounded in both personal experience and empirical research on interdisciplinarity, examines the systemic and institutional barriers that interdisciplinary researchers face—particularly the misalignment with monodisciplinary university structures, disciplinary language gaps, learning costs, and publication and funding challenges. Special attention will be given to how this varies across career stages. Short-term disadvantages are weighed against longer-term funding and career outcomes and agile portfolio diversity. The talk concludes by identifying key structural and individual factors that enable successful interdisciplinary research trajectories.

Melinda Mills is a Professor of Demography and Population Health, based in the Demographic Science Unit and Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College. Mills’s research focus is on demography, biodemography and biosocial health, fertility and reproduction, applied statistics, complex trait genomics, geospatial inequalities and public health policy.