Far from being a fad, all interdisciplinary teaching and training practices must draw on established disciplinary knowledge and respond to the need to break down academic barriers and understand the complexity of social, political and environmental problems. These approaches require the development of new skills, adapted concepts, tools and methods to support the production of new knowledge.
In practical terms, this means taking a project-based approach to complex issues that cannot be tackled by a single discipline alone: The concerted efforts required to build an interdisciplinary training project were illustrated by morning speeches from Éric Berton, President of Aix-Marseille Université, Maryline Crivello, Vice-President of the Board of Directors, in charge of interdisciplinary policy, and Cécile Tournu Sammartino, in charge of policy for the Talent Development School, Rostane Mehdi, Director of Sciences Po Aix, Lionel Nicod, AMU Vice-President of Education, our guest speaker Frédéric Darbellay, Associate Professor at the University of Geneva, and representatives of two Aix-Marseille Université Instituts d’établissement: Rémi Corbineau and Kalliopi Baika for Arkaia and Anne Kavonoudias for Neuromarseille.
Sharing ideas, cultivating dialogue and developing partnerships requires us to evolve our practices, and it was to experiment with this approach that the day continued with participative workshops on three themes:
- Why interdisciplinarity in training? The reasons behind interdisciplinary approaches.
- Is it possible to dare interdisciplinarity in training today? From proven obstacles to possible solutions.
- Co-constructing the main principles of an interdisciplinary training project.
Following on from these workshops, and as a follow-up to the day’s events, a think-tank will be set up to discuss interdisciplinarity at the level of AMU and its partners.
