Multidisciplinary Research and International Co-operation: a Challenging Combination of Tasks

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Date: 5:30–7:00pm, Monday 10th July 2006
Venue: National Europe Centre, 1 Liversidge Street, The Australian National University

Professor Heinrich Hofmann

Scientific collaborations where practitioners work together on a specific research project with a common goal take many forms. The willingness of practitioners to collaborate is influenced by the goals of those providing the funding (e.g., government agency), the needs of researchers for access to knowledge and research tools, the availability of these resources, and the opportunities of practitioners to link together (e.g., conferences, Internet connection). As a result of both the external pressures and the known benefits of collaboration, many higher education institutions are trying to create interdisciplinary research and teaching. However, over 50% of collaborations fail!

There has been virtually no research on how to enable higher education institutions to conduct collaborative work. There are few articles that focus on examining how institutions moved from a culture that supports individual work to the ones that facilitate collaborative work. A three-stage model, described by A. Kezar [Research in Higher Education, 46/7 (2005) doi:10.1007/s11162-004-6227-5], emerged: The first stage, building commitment, contains four contextual elements — values, external pressure, learning and networks. Here the institution uses ideas/information from a variety of sources to convince members of the campus of the need to conduct collaborative work. In the second stage, commitment, senior executives demonstrate support and re-examine the mission of the campus and leadership emerges within the network. The third phase is called sustaining and includes the development of structures, networks, and rewards to support the collaborations.

In all case studies described in the literature, the intent was to have the faculty come together intellectually, not just functionally according to their institutional roles, resulting in the evolution of the group in order to think collectively in generating strategies that used the strengths of their individual disciplinary and paradigmatic expertise in a more genuinely integrated way.

ARC Nanotechnology Network Australian Research Council

Prof. Hofmann has more than 20 years of experience with cooperation in several European projects. For the past six years, this European collaboration extended to more international cooperation with universities in Asia. But the real challenge is obviously in the combination of international research cooperation combined with interdisciplinary research, encompasing basic physics, material science, biology and clinical research. An overview of the problems as well as the added value of such cooperation will be given, using as an example, Prof. Hofmann’s own research in the field of nanoparticles for medical applications.

This project is supported by International Science Linkages established under the Australian Government’s innovation statement, Backing Australia’s Ability,
and has received funding from the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Programme.
FEAST is hosted by The Australian National University on behalf of Australia’s research community.