What initially drew you to INTED and its work on interdisciplinary education?
It actually began when Anders had the idea of creating something within interdisciplinary education in the form of a Centre for Excellence in Education (SFU). I was invited to join the work of developing the application and immediately found the vision exciting. Interdisciplinarity seemed to me to be a field with significant potential, particularly in higher education, and one where there was still considerable room for development in a Norwegian context. The application process became the starting point for a broader academic interest in how interdisciplinarity can be understood, practiced, and embedded in education over time.
Which aspects of interdisciplinarity do you think need more attention or exploration?
There are several, actually. I have worked extensively in interdisciplinary settings myself, particularly in research, and I have also been involved in interdisciplinary teaching. These experiences have made me increasingly aware of aspects and challenges that have received too little attention. This includes administrative barriers that make it unnecessarily difficult to establish and deliver interdisciplinary education, but also more cultural and linguistic challenges that influence the quality of collaboration across disciplines. In both education and research, people often encounter differences in terminology, ways of working, and established traditions, all of which can make interdisciplinary collaboration challenging. These structures are often invisible, yet they have a major impact on whether interdisciplinarity functions effectively in practice.
I believe there is great potential in addressing both the structural and cultural conditions required for successful interdisciplinary collaboration, especially in educational contexts. INTED represented a valuable opportunity to work more systematically and comprehensively with these challenges and to develop more sustainable models for interdisciplinary education.
What inspires or drives your interest in interdisciplinarity?
What primarily inspires and motivates my interest in interdisciplinarity is the experience of understanding something new. It is about bringing different disciplinary perspectives into conversation with one another and using them to make sense of complex questions. The most rewarding moments are when insights, concepts, or solutions developed in one field can be applied to challenges that appear difficult or stuck in another. There is something deeply satisfying about discovering new connections and feeling that you are moving closer to an answer or a solution.
Why is INTED important?
I think the work we do in INTED highlights and takes seriously something that is often underestimated in interdisciplinary collaboration: the importance of time and process. One of the things we continuously learn through INTED is that there are no shortcuts to effective interdisciplinarity. If you want interdisciplinary collaboration to succeed, you need to invest sufficient time in getting to know one another, building trust, and developing a shared language. This means not assuming that people automatically understand one another or agree, but creating opportunities to explore different understandings, assumptions, and perspectives through repeated dialogue.
This kind of work is essential for addressing complex challenges together. The time invested is not simply socializing or informal conversation; it is a necessary foundation for genuine interdisciplinary integration.
At INTED, we have experienced how much these processes influence both the quality of collaboration and the outcomes. We have also seen the value of concrete, well-tested tools and approaches for interdisciplinary collaboration. Such tools help structure dialogue, make disciplinary differences explicit, and support collaboration in a more intentional way. Our experience shows that this not only makes collaboration easier but also more meaningful.
What do you see as the potential of interdisciplinary education?
I think the answer depends somewhat on how we understand interdisciplinary education and what we consider disciplinary education to be. To engage in meaningful interdisciplinary work, you also need a disciplinary foundation. You need depth and expertise in a field. Interdisciplinarity should therefore not be understood as an alternative to disciplinary education, but rather as something that builds upon it.
One of the most important goals, in my view, is to give students opportunities and experiences that help them develop interdisciplinary competence. This includes helping them understand how their own discipline fits into a broader context and what other disciplines can contribute when addressing different kinds of problems. Equally important is developing the ability to listen to other disciplinary perspectives and recognize their relevance. To support this, students should also be introduced to practical tools and methods that help structure and facilitate interdisciplinary processes in thoughtful and productive ways.
With the growing focus on interdisciplinarity, how do you envision the future of higher education?
That could be interpreted as a question about how I think higher education will develop, or how I would like it to develop. My answer probably contains elements of both. We often hear that the world is changing rapidly and that education must adapt to an ever-changing labour market. I think there is some truth to that, but we should not let it dominate our thinking. Higher education should not primarily be about producing “cogs in a machine”; it should be about educating people.
We do not know exactly what the future will look like, and for that very reason higher education must provide students with more than just specific skills. It should help them find meaningful work, but also support their development as reflective, responsible, and independent individuals. I hope we continue to develop educational programmes that allow for both disciplinary depth and broader perspectives, and that create opportunities for students to meet, collaborate, and engage in dialogue with one another.
I also believe that social interaction will remain critically important. Technology already plays, and will continue to play, an increasingly significant role. However, we need to be thoughtful about how it is used. It would be unfortunate if technology replaced the human aspects of interaction and exchange. We should use technology where it truly adds value, while continuing to focus on what we do best as human beings: connecting, communicating, and learning from one another.