The SPINE project addresses the critical gap between the acknowledged importance of interdisciplinary research and the practical realities of collaboration within existing academic structures. Traditional academic systems, shaped by departmental silos, discipline-specific funding, and differing norms, often constrain interdisciplinary work. These structural conditions take practical form in misaligned timelines, co-supervision complexities, and differing evaluation criteria, all of which complicate collaboration across research domains.

With a specific focus on doctoral-level education, SPINE investigates how collaborative infrastructures can be developed and implemented to bridge biomedical, natural science, and clinical research domains without requiring fundamental institutional restructuring. We conduct ethnographic fieldwork and participatory action research in different global contexts to examine how interdisciplinary research is organised, what infrastructures and practices exist, and how they support or hinder collaboration.

The insights gained from this cross-national, comparative research inform the co-development of practical, plug-and-play tools and methods together with doctoral students, supervisors, and institutions. These tools are designed to be flexible and adaptable, so they can be applied within existing structures to support collaboration across different research domains and institutional contexts. In doing so, SPINE seeks to strengthen the structural and practical conditions that make sustained interdisciplinary collaboration possible.

Who we are

Katrine Ellemose Lindvig is Associate Professor of Higher Education Research and leads the Lundbeck Foundation-funded SPINE project. In her research, she explores how students, faculty, and researchers navigate explicit and implicit structures in higher education. She has developed concepts such as the “loud” and “soft” voices of interdisciplinarity, which are used to analyse tensions between institutional ambitions and academic practice and have informed doctoral training, programme design discussions, and policy debates. Her work combines ethnographic studies of interdisciplinary education with practical tools for collaboration, including co-founding CoNavigator, a facilitation tool that helps make interdisciplinary collaboration more visible and actionable across universities in Europe, the UK, and the US.

Anders H. Lund is Professor and Director of the Biotech Research & Innovation Centre (BRIC) at the University of Copenhagen, and Co-PI in the SPINE project. His research centres on RNA biology and the molecular mechanisms underlying cancer, and he has long been engaged in building collaborative structures across the natural sciences and health research. At BRIC, he leads an interdisciplinary research environment where scientific and clinical perspectives meet, an experience that directly informs his role in SPINE. He is also co-supervisor of PhD fellow Pelle Boers.

Natalia Rodríguez Castañeda is a postdoctoral researcher on the SPINE project and an environmental, health, and social anthropologist. She conducts interdisciplinary and international research at the interface of nature, health, and society, addressing complex socio-ecological challenges through deep social science engagement and multi-stakeholder collaboration. Natalia bridges medical and ecological fields by combining ethnographic fieldwork with interdisciplinary education, fostering systems-thinking and participatory approaches to co-create innovative tools, methods, and frameworks for academic research and policy-relevant solutions.

Vera Spangler is a postdoctoral researcher on the SPINE project and an interdisciplinary social anthropologist. She works on how knowledge is produced, legitimised, and mobilised across global and institutional contexts, with a focus on hierarchies, collaborative practices, and comparative perspectives. Vera combines decolonial and spatial approaches with creative, participatory methodologies to study the social and organisational dynamics that shape knowledge production.

Pelle Boers is a PhD student for the INTERACT programme based at the Department of Science Education, UCPH.His project examines how this interdisciplinary STEM research is carried out, exploring both the institutional structures and the embodied interdisciplinary research practices that are shaped by this institutional structuring. Drawing on anthropology and philosophy of science, Pelle investigates what interdisciplinary STEM research in MSCA programmes truly looks like in practice. Pelle is affiliated to the SPINE project as an associated researcher.

Cecilia Romanò is a research consultant at the Biotech Research & Innovation Centre (BRIC), University of Copenhagen, and part of the SPINE project team, where she helps plan and develop core activities such as symposia, workshops, and test runs of collaborative tools. With a PhD in carbohydrate chemistry and postdoctoral research integrating chemistry and cancer immunotherapy, as well as experience coordinating the INTERACT doctoral programme at BRIC, she brings both a researcher's perspective and a practical understanding of what it takes to build collaborative research environments.

Spine is supported by the Lundbeck Foundation

Project: SPINE - Strengthening Pathways and Infrastructures for Navigating interdisciplinary collaboration in Existing academic structures

Period: 1. jan. 2026 - 31. dec. 2029

Contact

If you would like to know more about the project, please contact us for further information:

Katrine Lindvig, Associate Professor