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.
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.
The SPINE project is investigating the infrastructures, practices, and conditions that enable or hinder interdisciplinary collaboration, with a focus on doctoral research bridging biomedical, natural, and clinical sciences. Through global, comparative fieldwork and participatory action research, the project seeks to map patterns of collaboration, identify friction points, and co-develop practical tools that can be applied across institutions and disciplines.
The SPINE project team conducts ethnographic fieldwork and participatory action research in multiple global contexts, observing how interdisciplinary research is organised, what infrastructures exist, and how collaboration unfolds in practice. By comparing different approaches internationally, the project identifies patterns, friction points, and strategies that support collaborative teamwork. This includes examining doctoral supervision, project design, and institutional practices to understand what enables interdisciplinary work and where challenges persist.
The insights gained from this international, comparative research inform the development of practical approaches that can support researchers and institutions in navigating interdisciplinary collaboration.
SPINE seeks to develop tools and methods that support cross-disciplinary collaboration. SPINE aims to make these tools and methods robust, flexible, and relevant across multiple settings.
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