Keywords

Introduction

This book sets out from a normative and experimental starting point: We assumed that if scholars from across the divide of SSH and STEM work together to address challenges within transport and mobility, we would likely end up with a combination of better and surprising insights combined with policy recommendations that in new and holistic ways challenge the modus operandi of transport and policymaking in the EU. To unlock this potential, we established a series of interdisciplinary research teams across the continent, who were tasked precisely with combining SSH and STEM to analyse a phenomenon and come up with policy recommendations. Against this backdrop there are many ways to read the preceding chapters. On the one hand, it is possible to read this book as a failure: many of the book chapters come across as relatively traditional analyses, where it may be difficult to see the explicit interdisciplinary contribution. Another, and more constructive, reading is to view the book as a process-oriented experiment, valuing the process and learning from it, as well as the seeds that the process may have yielded in a long-term perspective. In this concluding chapter, we will discuss the sum of what this experimental book can teach us about SSH-STEM collaborations, about the transport and mobility field, as well as the challenges of translating knowledge into policy recommendations.

On Interdisciplinary Collaboration

In this book, we have tried to push a multi- and interdisciplinary research agenda. This means that we break with what has been the dominant organisation of knowledge and science in the twentieth century, namely a traditional form of disciplinarity (Klein, 2010). Multidisciplinary approaches aim to bring disciplines together, but typically end up with disciplines working side-by-side, rather than in an integrated and collaborative way. Interdisciplinarity, on the other hand, is based on not only juxtaposing knowledge from different disciplines, but concerns the integration of data, methods, tools, concepts, theories, and/or perspectives from multiple disciplines in order to answer a question, solve a problem or address a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with by one discipline (Klein, 2010). Arguably, transportation and mobility are examples of such complex topics. Interdisciplinarity has for the last decade expanded into a heterogeneity of practices and forms. Today it ranges from borrowing tools and methods across academic fields, to forming new fields and inter-disciplines. So, what form of interdisciplinary do we find represented on the pages of this edited volume?

In the chapters of this book, we identify several interesting approaches to interdisciplinary work where the authors strive to bridge disciplines and conduct disciplinary work across SSH and STEM.

Despite many good attempts, we still observe that disciplines continue to speak with separate voices and retain original identity. This should not be a surprise. Previous research on the practices of interdisciplinarity illustrates that interdisciplinary is a challenging endeavour. While our book represents a small-scale, one-off effort to nurture new practices, to make new and long-lasting interdisciplinary collaborations across SSH-STEM requires consideration of institutional context, availability of resources, and time.

For instance, the common assumption that complex problems must be solved by integrating interdisciplinary solutions have often proven to “melt under closer inspection” (Winskel, 2014, p. 78), as problems could also be tackled by partial or specialised knowledge or solutions that are integrated or collated afterwards. In this book, authors were asked to design policy recommendations based on their interdisciplinary knowledge process. This then mimics typical policymaking processes, as policy often demands some kind of integrated approach and do not settle with partial or specialised answers. This would lead policymakers themselves to have to do the integration work. Designing policy recommendations that foster integration or a holistic approach, however, is a very ambitious task. With this as a backdrop, our project can be critiqued as somewhat naïve.

What Do the Chapters Say About Interdisciplinary Collaborations?

The character of the interdisciplinary collaborations is described to a varying degree in different chapters. There are examples of discussions that highlight the merit of integrating insights, e.g. as Chapter 6 (Lieszkovszky et al.) attempts to bring transport engineering and social science disciplines together in a discussion about demand responsive transport solutions. In Chapter 5 (Krumnikl et al.), the technological solution at hand is taken for granted in an exploration of barriers to implementation—STEM researchers investigated the efficiency of new electric buses, while SSH scholars provided broader contextual research and focussed on public perception. Chapter 9 (Michailidis et al.), arguably does things the other way around. Here, the problem addressed is how to design policy bottom-up through co-creation, while the case at hand is artificial intelligence. These three examples, then, demonstrate different approaches to interdisciplinarity in our book.

Reflections on SSH-STEM Collaborations

This book project has been an experiment in facilitating interdisciplinary research collaboration. One way that authors have solved the challenge of doing interdisciplinary research is by using SSH-related tools and methods to answer a STEM problem formulation, and vice versa and methods from other disciplines to answer to the problem formulation, as illustrated in the previous paragraph. This type of interdisciplinarity, where social science plays a subservient or “gap-filling” role, is rather common, but contested by some as it might re-enforce stale understandings of what the underlying problems are, rather than opening up for more radical explorations (Winskel, 2018: 78).

Nevertheless, the research teams had limited time to carry out the research. They collected and analysed data and wrote the first draft in a course of 6 months. The collaborations assumed that the members of the team had not worked together before, which required time and effort to develop a common understanding of ways of collaboration and an understanding of different languages that the SSH and STEM communities may speak. While good collaboration, especially across different disciplines, may take years to build, our authors endeavoured to a fast track to interdisciplinarity.

In doing so, the book project experiment has probably been successful in making transport and mobility scholars look beyond their normal or traditional disciplinary way of defining research questions and problems, though we have probably not revolutionised the transport and mobility field. On the other hand, we should not be too cynical as it is difficult to predict the effects that the experiment may have in the longer run. The book project experiment and the activities of the chapter teams may have longer-term impact in broadening the horizons of those participating. Perhaps the fruits of this experiment may be seen in future transport and mobility projects and future research collaborations. For this to happen, it surely needs to be matured and nurtured as we suggest in the policy recommendations below.

Challenges and Opportunities for Interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinarity is not easy. In this book, scholars with different levels of experience and training in the disciplines are probed to work across SSH and STEM, thus, performing a relatively rare form of ‘radical interdisciplinarity’. To come up with policy recommendations based on such an approach is difficult, as it demands some form of integration of the scientific output. Policy recommendations also demand converting knowledge into action-propositions. Even more basic and ‘cognate’ interdisciplinarity is hard to conduct and in need of specific nurturing, in terms of institutional embedding, time, and resources. In deep academic structures, such work still has a hard time. Universities are built around traditional disciplines, and funding bodies massively over-fund STEM compared to SSH (Silvast & Foulds, 2022).

Another challenge related to formulating policy recommendations at the EU level, is that local and regional transport is regulated at the local levels with just general EU policies and guidelines in place (such as the guidelines for preparing sustainable urban mobility plans), while local authorities may choose their own approaches to organising public transport. Most of the chapters in this book report on research that was conducted in relation to such local or city-level policies. These may, in practice, prove difficult to connect to the EU level, which remains more abstract and difficult to grasp for the researchers.

It is both time-consuming, difficult and honestly—often frustrating—to collaborate across disciplines. At the same time, successful interdisciplinary groups, projects, or networks are vulnerable within contemporary knowledge production institutions. It often comes across as a no-brainer that one should collaborate across disciplines, but in practice the epistemic, ontological, and practical challenges tend to push researchers back to their well-established disciplines. Thus, if one wants to have more interdisciplinary collaboration between SSH and STEM, this needs specific focus and attention in calls, longer-term financing, and the training of scholars. Therefore, our concluding policy recommendations are:

  • Link the strategic goals of interdisciplinarity to financial incentives and methods for governing.

  • Provide enough time and space (and coordinating functions) to allow for interaction and mediation between researchers.

  • Consider consortia sizes, as smaller and more tightly interwoven research teams are more successful for inter- and transdisciplinary research compared to large and more loosely organised teams or networks.