The literature on interdisciplinary higher education is influenced by two
overall trends: one looks at the institutional level of specially designed
interdisciplinary institutions, while the other assesses individual
interdisciplinary educational activities. Much less attention is given to
the processes of creating interdisciplinary education initiatives within
traditional monodisciplinary universities. In this study, we thus explore
how interdisciplinary education and teaching emerge and develop
within universities that have little or no established infrastructure to
support interdisciplinarity. Using qualitative data from a multi-part case
study, we examine the development of diverse interdisciplinary
educational efforts within a traditional faculty-structured university in
order to map the ways in which interdisciplinary educational elements
have been created, supported, challenged or even strengthened by pre-
existing monodisciplinary structures. Drawing on theories from
economics, literature studies and sociology of education, we conclude
that creating interdisciplinary education in such settings demands skills
that we define as the
‘
art of managing interstitiality
’
.