Abstract
This chapter is about the policies being applied at European level by the European Commission to promote interdisciplinarity throughout its main policy tool since 1984, the Framework Programme (FP). In this context, interdisciplinarity is defined as the combination of knowledges between the social sciences and the humanities (SSH) and the ‘natural’ or ‘life’ sciences (also called ‘STEM’ sometimes) in order to tackle societal and technological challenges that need to be integrated in a wider social, economic, cultural and political perspective which constrain technological development. The history of the FP shows that the promotion of interdisciplinarity in FPs was based on a ‘two-legs’ approach with, on the one hand, a dedicated European research programme on the main social, economic, cultural and political challenges of Europe, and on the other hand, attempts at promoting interdisciplinarity between SSH and STEM. FP8 (2014–2020), called Horizon 2020, is a significant departure from past practices since it calls exclusively for the integration of SSH across the whole FP without a dedicated research programme on Europe’s main social, economic, cultural and political issues. The preliminary results of this new policy of interdisciplinarity are reviewed and lead to several suggestions as to how to strengthen a long-term effective EU research policy for interdisciplinarity between SSH and STEM research, while preserving the benefits of disciplinary research or of other kinds of interdisciplinarity.
Senior Expert in Social Sciences and the Humanities, Deputy Head of Unit, European Commission. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the European Commission.
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- 1.
We acknowledge that such categories as “SSH”, “natural” or “STEM” are not without many difficulties but we shall use them as adequate proxies for the sake of the argument.
- 2.
The term “activity” refers to the structuration of FP5 in 5 different “Activities” which are the main components of FP5. Activity 1 is called “Research, technological development and demonstration programmes” whereas Activity 4 is called “Stimulation of the training and mobility of researchers in the Community”.
- 3.
FP5 had also added to the list of evaluation criteria a specific evaluation criterion called “Contribution to Community social objectives”.
- 4.
Compared to FP5 (see footnote 5 above), FP6 had no specific “socio-economic” criterion, which meant of course that interdisciplinarity between SSH and STEM disciplines in research proposals was less of a requirement.
- 5.
Although it has to be said that the FP collaborative research has for long given up exclusive disciplinary research and has practiced interdisciplinarity within STEM research and within SSH research. Thus, the levels of interdisciplinarity between social sciences and between social sciences and the humanities in FP SSH collaborative research has been strong (with the exception of economics in particular).
- 6.
See the very cogent remarks of J.L. Fabiani (Horizons for Social Sciences and Humanities 2013, 43–48).
- 7.
Not to mention, of course, that only a very small percentage of PhDs choose the academic career track. Therefore, for a large majority of PhD holders, interdisciplinarity competence is essential in their non-academic professional life and is likely to be beneficial to the process of innovation which the Framework Programmes are supposed to support.
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Acknowlegdements
I would like to thank Manfred Horvat, Nikos Kastrinos, Angela Liberatore, Helga Nowotny and Michel Wieviorka for accepting to read this text and provide very valuable advice. Of course, the responsibility for all faults, mistakes and omissions remains entirely mine.
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Keraudren, P. (2018). The Contribution of Social Sciences and the Humanities to Research Addressing Societal Challenges. Towards a Policy for Interdisciplinarity at European Level?. In: Tressaud, A. (eds) Progress in Science, Progress in Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69974-5_5
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