Hotel Bayrischer Hof

Interdisciplinarity is widely celebrated as essential to tackling complex societal and scientific challenges, yet it remains difficult to practice well. In this panel debate, panellists reflect on how ideas, tools, and collaborators from outside their home fields shaped their most consequential work, and when disciplinary depth proved the decisive ingredient. Drawing on personal research trajectories, the panellists will examine what “integration” looks like in practice: how to build shared problem framings, translate between different standards of evidence, and manage the tensions created by incentives, credit, and peer review. The conversation will also address institutional and policy questions: how funders and universities can evaluate interdisciplinary proposals fairly, support boundary-spanning roles, and create career paths that do not penalize risk-taking or intellectual hybridity.