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Geoforum 39 (2008) 552–560
www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum
0016-7185/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2006.08.013
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
‘Jack of all trades’? The negotiation of interdisciplinarity
within geography
Lisa Lau a,¤, Margaret Pasquini b
a Department of Geography, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
b CAZS Natural Resources, University of Wales Bangor, Deiniol Road, Gwynedd, Bangor, Wales LL57 2UW, UK
Received 11 May 2005; received in revised form 26 June 2006
Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between interdisciplinary studies and research and researchers’ positionalities, both within and
beyond geography. The profound degree to which researchers’ assumptions, expectations and attitudes (which in turn are aVected by
their personal backgrounds, training, location, etc.) inXuences the very notion of interdisciplinarity, and what it involves and consists of, is
often neither noted nor appreciated. This paper will illustrate, particularly through personal examples, how positionality is part of the cir-
cuit of knowledge production, informing academic research, employment and publishing to no small extent. The boundaries of interdisci-
plinary research are shown to be under constant negotiation, still far from mutual understanding or consensus, a fact which explains the
often uneasy identiWcation and negotiation of oneself as an interdisciplinary scholar. The paper concludes by making recommendations
at individual and institutional level on how to overcome some of the constraints imposed by researchers’ positionalities to the promotion
of interdisciplinary research.
© 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Interdisciplinarity; Geography; Positionality; Perceptions; Disciplines; United Kingdom
1. Introduction
This paper explores the interdisciplinarity of geography
in relation to the increasing interdisciplinarity emergent
within academia, which can be understood as the linkage
amongst the categories of natural sciences, social sciences
and the humanities (Donald, 1990; Fisher et al., 2005;
Stotesbury, 2003).
In a recent review of the future of geography, Thrift
(2002) concluded by saying that geography has absorbed
(and exported) ideas and tools from many sources in order
to help recognise and understand the myriad new geogra-
phies constantly being brought into existence (Thrift, 2002).
The development and expansion of those myriad new geog-
raphies is one reason that interdisciplinary work has been
gaining popularity amongst geographers. It is evident that
not every aspect of the discipline of geography can be or
needs to be interdisciplinary, but it is equally evident that
some areas (such as development and environmental stud-
ies, for example), beneWt from and even require interdisci-
plinary conceptualisations, approaches and methodologies.
This paper focuses on a discussion of how the position-
ality of researchers plays a crucial role in interdisciplinary
studies and research, both within and beyond geography. It
will argue that the expectations, attitudes, and approaches
of researchers, and their very conceptualising of interdisci-
plinarity, are all inXuenced by their personal backgrounds
to a considerable degree, although the extent of this inXu-
ence may be neither noticed nor acknowledged. It will dem-
onstrate, through examples derived from the authors’ own
experiences, how positionality is both informed by, and
informs, disciplinary contexts. It will trace this circuit of
knowledge production and illustrate that the boundaries of
interdisciplinarity are being constantly drawn and redrawn,
*Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: l.e.j.lau@gmail.com (L. Lau), margaretpasquini@
yahoo.co.uk (M. Pasquini).
L. Lau, M. Pasquini / Geoforum 39 (2008) 552–560 553
and continue to be understood diVerently by members even
within the same discipline.
This paper builds upon a paper published in a special
issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (Lau and Pasqu-
ini, 2004), which discussed how we joined the Department
of Geography at Durham in the autumn of 1999 to com-
mence our Ph.D.s, and how having come from non-geogra-
phy backgrounds, we then proceeded to engage in
interdisciplinary research. The inspiration for that Wrst arti-
cle sprang from our discovery of shared feelings of tension
in being interdisciplinary, of an uneasy identiWcation of
ourselves as geographers, and of a common struggle to Wnd
a disciplinary niche. Thus prompted to try to understand
the reasons for our struggle to negotiate a place and iden-
tity in our new disciplinary homes, we conducted 14 semi-
structured interviews with seven human geographers, Wve
physical geographers and two anthropologists (chosen for
their strong links to geography), all of whom had experi-
ence of supervising interdisciplinary students or a professed
interest in interdisciplinary research.
The material we collected revealed that despite general-
ised positive responses to the notion of interdisciplinary
research, this could not be taken at face value, since
respondents did not always share a common deWnition or
understanding of interdisciplinary research, nor indeed did
they have a common understanding of what geography
encompasses. Analysing the interviews, we gained a better
understanding of the theoretical and conceptual complica-
tions of engaging in interdisciplinary research, and the
practical obstacles facing interdisciplinary scholars. These
included mastering multiple approaches and methodolo-
gies, the diYculties in securing research funding and pub-
lishing in high-ranking journals, negotiating positions
within and across rigid research groups, and seeking
employment. Consequently we understood that our diY-
culties in negotiating an identity and place within geogra-
phy stemmed at least in part from the fact that there exists
no common understanding of what constitutes interdisci-
plinary research.
In this paper, we build upon these lessons, exploring our
three years of post-Ph.D. experiences in the light of an
apparent growing emphasis on interdisciplinarity and an
increasing call for interdisciplinary studies. A re-discovered
interest in bringing together physical and human geogra-
phers led to a special session held to promote discussions
between physical and human geographers at the September
2003 RGS-IBG conference in London, followed up by a
similar session at the IGC/RGS-IBG meeting in Glasgow in
August 2004. More broadly, there are signs of interest
within academia in projects which cut across disciplinary
boundaries. For example, NERC/ESRC (Economic and
Social Research Council/ Natural Environment Research
Council) have for the past six years been funding a scheme
for joint research studentships (see Evans and Randalls, this
issue), and more recently, three of the UK research councils
(ESRC, NERC, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sci-
ences Research Council (BBSRC)) have jointly funded an
interdisciplinary programme on Rural Economy and Land
Use (RELU). Bodies such as the Leverhulme Trust also
place special weight on ‘the removal of barriers between
traditional disciplines’ in research projects that they will
support (<http://www.leverhulme.org.uk/about/>).
Notwithstanding these new trends, we argue in this
paper that the successful promotion and execution of inter-
disciplinary research, both within geography and in allied
disciplines, will require more than goodwill and sympathy.
It will require radical changes in the ways in which the
scholars of the future are trained, and to that end, it will
require substantial rethinking of existing disciplinary
assumptions, approaches, theoretical foundations, bound-
aries, and aims.
2. A Three-way interdependency
The rise of mono-disciplines has in part been due to the
orientation of Western culture and consciousness towards
analysis since the eighteenth century, rather than toward
synthesis (Baigent et al., 1982; Radway, 1988). “In accor-
dance with this tendency, modern scholarship lays inordi-
nate emphasis on specialisation – which, as the modern
university attests, implies and entails the segregation of
knowledge into distinct ‘disciplines’. In consequence, the
diverse spheres covered by our inquiry have traditionally
been segmented into quite separate compartments. [ƒ]
Indeed such ‘experts’ tend generally to regard Welds other
than their own with considerable suspicion – spurious at
worst, at best irrelevant. And eclectic or ‘interdisciplinary’
research is often actively discouraged as being, among
other things, too speculative” (Baigent et al., 1982).1
In recent years however, interdisciplinary studies have
become popular (Galmiche-Tejeda, 2004; Gunasekara,
2004), and many research articles now contain the term
‘interdisciplinary’. Horwitz (2003) comments that: “Interdis-
ciplinary research is a linchpin of major scientiWc progress
and innovation”. Academic literature is increasingly pep-
pered with this term, but what precisely does it refer to, or
encompass in its deWnition? Is there a commonly accepted
understanding of interdisciplinarity across the disciplines?
In many articles, absence of deWnition when the term is
employed appears to imply the assumption of a universally-
accepted deWnition but, in actuality, labelling of projects
involving multiple disciplines has been inconsistent (e.g.
Jakobsen et al., 2004; Bruce et al., 2004; Musacchio et al.,
2005), and there is no clear-cut agreement on the meaning
of interdisciplinary. As Sillitoe (2004) explains:
1Of course, the segregation of knowledge into disciplines does have its
beneWts. As Harriss (2002, p. 487) explains: “When we speak of an
academic “discipline” we imply not just particular subject-matter but also
the existence of “a system of rules”—reproduced through training—for
deWning that subject-matter and the ways in which it is to be studied. This
creates conditions that make for the cumulation of knowledge partly by
establishing the basis for diVerentiating between “knowledge” and “opin-
ion”.”
554 L. Lau, M. Pasquini / Geoforum 39 (2008) 552–560
“DiVerent degrees of interdisciplinarity have been dis-
tinguished, deWned largely by functional interaction,
with the proliferation of labels. Unidisciplinarity
(Sands, 1993) is where disciplines work indepen-
dently. Multidisciplinarity (Rhodes et al., 1986),
cross-disciplinarity or additive multidisciplinarity
(Lockeretz, 1991) is where a group of researchers
from diVerent disciplines contribute to a problem,
and may confer, cooperate and coordinate their work.
[ƒ] Interdisciplinarity (Sands, 1993; Rhodes et al.,
1986) or integrated multidisciplinarity (Lockeretz,
1991) is where teams interact and collaboration
extends to joint activities and shared responsibility.
Transdisciplinarity (Sands, 1993) or non-disciplinary
multidisciplinarity (Lockeretz, 1991), or recently plu-
ridisciplinarity, is where joint thinking leads to inte-
gration around common axioms and research is issue
based with no disciplinary distinctions [ƒ]” (p. 8–9).
The following randomly selected examples from recent arti-
cles illustrate how deWnitions of interdisciplinarity (versus
other labels which are used to describe projects comprising
more than one discipline) vary. Harriss (2002), for example,
sees the phrase ‘cross-disciplinary’ as including the concept
of ‘multi-disciplinarity’, when arguments from diVerent dis-
ciplines are set side-by-side, and distinguishes this from
‘interdisciplinarity’, where there is an attempt to integrate
the theoretical and methodological frameworks of diVerent
disciplines. For Winnacker (2003) “Interdisciplinarity is
thus evolving from a research philosophy that increases the
interaction between disciplines to one that also includes
societal issues”. Max-Neef (2005) explains that multidisci-
plinary teams carry out their analyses separately, from sin-
gle disciplinary perspectives, with no eVorts at integration;
pluridisciplinarity implies cooperation between disciplines,
occurring usually on a common hierarchical level, with no
coordination (e.g. combinations of history, sociology and
language); whereas interdisciplinary research is “[ƒ] orga-
nized at two hierarchical levels. It thus connotes coordina-
tion of a lower level from a higher one” (p. 6) (an example
being when agriculture coordinates and gives purpose to
disciplines such as chemistry, soils, sociology and biology).
Others still distinguish between diVerent forms of interdis-
ciplinarity. Rapport et al. (1998) (cited in Jakobsen et al.,
2004) see interdisciplinarity as the coordinated interaction
across multiple disciplines but clarify that in unidirectional
interdisciplinarity, potential integration of knowledge is
controlled by one dominant discipline, whereas in goal-ori-
ented interdisciplinarity, integration is guided by the identi-
Wed issue being researched.
In terms of our own deWnition of interdisciplinarity for
the purposes of this paper, and taking into account both
our personal academic histories (which have clearly col-
oured our own understanding), and the lack of consensual
deWnitions, we have evolved a working deWnition, which is
open-ended rather than exhaustive. We intend to work with
a deWnition “which embraces notions of the porosity of dis-
ciplinary boundaries, and the combination and synthesis of
methodologies and techniques” (Lau and Pasquini, 2004,
p. 50). The interdisciplinary endeavours which particularly
interest us in this article are those which bridge the three
broad categories of natural sciences, social sciences and
humanities.
Interdisciplinary work, of course, aims to reduce segre-
gation of knowledge by building workable bridges between
otherwise compartmentalised knowledges, with the objec-
tive of integrating ideas, concepts, and methodologies from
various disciplinary traditions in order to promote a more
complete understanding. Advanced interdisciplinary work
might even aspire to bring about theoretical and methodo-
logical marriages leading to an ever more productive
hybridity of disciplines, capable of analysing and perceiving
a complex world in a comprehensive, nuanced, holistic and
sensitised manner. Advocates of interdisciplinarity see this
approach as strengthening the understanding of experts in
their Welds in relation to the rest of the world, an approach
which would not be at the expense of the depth of expertise
(contrary to pessimistic assumptions expressed by a num-
ber of the respondents in our study in the Durham Univer-
sity Department of Geography).
However, one impediment to the initiation and explora-
tion of interdisciplinary work is that much of it still begins
by taking for granted the grounds that have founded par-
ticular disciplines (Radway, 1988). Radway explains that
certain assumptions are made, based on what appears to
each discipline to be the commonsense approach, and this
may actually block the process of understanding, hindering
the perception of how new linkages may be made.
In 1997, Gillian Rose established the case for situated
knowledges, emphasizing the need for reXexivity on the
part of researchers to recognise that the production of
knowledge, the results obtained, the type of research
embarked upon, all in large part reXect the positionality of
the researcher, “[ƒ] subjugated and critical knowledges
work from their situatedness to produce partial perspec-
tives on the world. They see the world from speciWc loca-
tions, embodied and particular, and never innocent; siting is
intimately involved in sighting” (Rose, 1997, p. 308). For
this paper “positionality involves taking into account the
factors which contribute to the shaping of a person’s iden-
tity, perspectives, worldviews and angles of perception.
These factors can include such things as a person’s gender,
age, race, nationality, religion, education, training, travels
and experiences. Positionality does not seek a deterministic
reduction of a person’s identity or work towards the sum of
these inXuencing factors. Rather, positionality involves
acknowledging these powerful inXuences so that they can
be taken into account during the process of research” (Lau,
2004, p. 65). Readers are referred to authors such as Hall
(1991), Harding (1991) and McDowell (1992) for a more
comprehensive discussion on positionality.
From this it follows that if the very deWnition of interdis-
ciplinarity is necessarily under constant debate, this may be
in large part due to the myriad positionalities of spectators
L. Lau, M. Pasquini / Geoforum 39 (2008) 552–560 555
of, and actors in, interdisciplinary research. The interdepen-
dency of one’s positionality and one’s understanding of
interdisciplinarity is an issue which has too seldom been
explored, although clearly fundamental to the approach to
and reception of interdisciplinary research. This interde-
pendency has been relatively unappreciated, and the word
interdisciplinary has accordingly lost much of its intellec-
tual purchase.
Even within a discipline such as geography, which has
historically brought together natural and social scientists
and those working in the humanities, there is no shared
understanding of the concept of interdisciplinarity precisely
because this depends on the positionality of the person
attempting to pinpoint the concept.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that the
very meaning of geography is contested, and depends, just
like interdisciplinarity, on the positionality of the geogra-
pher attempting to deWne it, keeping in mind that academic
geographers may not necessarily hail from a geographical
background. “Equally, with changing and evolving concep-
tions of interdisciplinarity, the deWnition of what makes a
geographer or what constitutes the discipline of geography
is also a continually changing one, which in turn will lead to
changing positionalities. We appreciate that the deWnitions
of disciplines and the porosities of their boundaries are in a
constant state of Xux given the strong interdependence of
these concepts [ƒ]” (Lau and Pasquini, 2004, p. 63).
Drawing as geography does from the natural sciences,
the social sciences and the humanities, as a discipline it is
advantageously positioned to engage in interdisciplinary
work. However, occupying this position is fraught with ten-
sions due to the diYculty of negotiating an acceptable mid-
dle ground (in terms of ideologies, research approaches,
priorities, methodologies, etc.). Therefore, the most abun-
dant and fruitful interdisciplinary work carried out by
geographers has been across cognate disciplines, and less so
across the three broad academic categories (natural sci-
ences, social sciences and humanities). The result is perhaps
the sense of a threat to the coherence of geography as an
integrated discipline.
The emphasis of this paper on the role of positionality in
inXuencing the interpretation of interdisciplinarity amongst
geographers is not intended to be reductive, deterministic
or formulaic. It is simply to foreground this issue of the
interdependency of these elements and to acknowledge how
each impacts upon and changes the other, in a continual
process.
3. Cartographies of comprehension2
The authors both joined a Department of Geography
after very diVerent and non-Geographical educational and
research backgrounds. These personal histories are outlined
in the Appendix.
The experience of joining a Geography Department at
doctoral level, given these backgrounds and the positional-
ities they produced, was fraught with anxieties over the
authors’ academic identities, a sense of not being in the
right place, of being viewed as a curiosity by other ‘real’
geographers, and of struggling at every level to carry out
interdisciplinary research while trying to Wt into the new
department. This led to a more formal exploration of the
questions of interdisciplinarity through a series of inter-
views with lecturers of the Geography Department, Univer-
sity of Durham.3
Respondents4 initially and generally reacted favourably
to the idea of interdisciplinary research because ‘the sparks
Xy, there is more electricity’ (Snowdonia), it ‘challenged
preconceptions’ (Vesuvius) and was ‘the way for the future’
(Kilimanjaro). However, as the interviews progressed, this
sanguine view was rapidly tempered by more complex reac-
tions, demonstrating diVerent platforms of understanding
regarding interdisciplinary research, as well as controversial
feelings towards geography as a discipline.
It became swiftly apparent that respondents often did
not share common deWnitions when discussing interdisci-
plinarity. In some cases, diVerent terms would be used inter-
changeably. Interdisciplinary was occasionally replaced
with crossdisciplinary (Matterhorn, Everest). Several
respondents clariWed that what was called interdisciplinary
was often a team-based approach, i.e. multidisciplinarity.
Vesuvius explained that a research programme could tran-
scend disciplines, but individuals tended to be rooted in
their specialisms. Indeed, true interdisciplinarity could only
be achieved if the partners in a research project worked
together side-by-side in the Weld for a long time (K2 and
Everest), but this only rarely occurred (K2).
The next layer of complexity was constituted by where
respondents thought interdisciplinary research was taking
place. There were roughly three groupings: geography link-
ing with other disciplines, links within geography between
diVerent geographical research groups, and a third smaller
group reXecting on both. These varied, implicit or explicit
deWnitions of interdisciplinary research naturally coloured
the course and content of each interview.
As Thrift has suggested, there is evidence of human and
physical geography splitting apart (Thrift, 2002), and in his
opinion, this has been encouraged by a lack of mutual trust.
To this, we might add that mutual understanding and com-
mon ground is also becoming increasingly threatened in the
process of the increasing separation of human and physical
geographies. The idea of integrating physical and human
geography found particular support amongst physical
2This section draws on material that was Wrst published in Lau and Pas-
quini, 2004. Meeting grounds: perceiving and deWning interdisciplinarity
across the arts, social sciences and sciences. Interdisciplinary Science
Reviews 29(1), 49–64.
3Our sample size was, of course, small and our conclusions should not
be assumed to be representative of the Department of Geography.
4To protect the anonymity of our respondents, they have been given
synonyms and named after mountains, in keeping with a geographical
spirit.
556 L. Lau, M. Pasquini / Geoforum 39 (2008) 552–560
geographers and human geographers with an interest in
development.
However, sceptical voices were found amongst the
human geographers, some of whom were ‘surprised that the
subject is still holding together’ (Matterhorn). For many
the diYculty in reconciling human and physical geography
stemmed from the way in which training in geography had
changed over time. Established senior geographers did not
see interdisciplinary research as anything new (McKinley,
Snowdonia, Everest, Huang Shan). Indeed, in a ‘traditional’
geography degree you would have studied both human and
physical geography (K2).5 Everest explained: ‘The old
school geographer had a very broad background, but they
are disappearing as they get older. The younger colleagues
tend to be a lot more specialised, and so in a sense, nar-
rower.’
In conclusion, this section has shown that diVering
understandings of and attitudes towards interdisciplinary
research depend very much on the diversity of geographers.
It was quite apparent that specialism, attitudes towards
geography as a discipline, age and type of training received,
all played a signiWcant part in shaping the ways in which
the respondents positioned themselves in respect to inter-
disciplinary research. It is likely that many other factors
(e.g. gender, area of expertise, seniority) also inXuence this
to varying degrees, but the sample size was too small to
gauge this.
However, although all respondents were positive about
interdisciplinarity, the key point remains as to whether this
demonstration of goodwill is more widespread, and
whether it translates into concrete measures and the avail-
ability of suitable funding.
4. Three years down the line
...
4.1. Challenge 1: Finding employment
In the last three years we, as interdisciplinary scholars,
have stepped out into the working world of academia,
where our Wrst concern has been to Wnd employment. Seek-
ing one’s Wrst job in an oversaturated market was not
expected to be easy, and indeed, was not. Even so, the slope
we have climbed has perhaps been steeper than that faced
by others. Both of us have had our credentials queried.
Why should anyone consider someone who has “diluted”
their Ph.D. with extraneous and multi-disciplinary mate-
rial?
As Etna explained, the career prospects of interdisciplin-
ary researchers are likely to be context-dependent since
“People can play both sides, and the interdisciplinary card,
but it can also be a disadvantage because they are not suY-
ciently specialised – people are dabbling in diVerent things”.
Our experiences suggest that because posts requiring aca-
demics with interdisciplinary skills are few and far between
at the present time, many interdisciplinary researchers are
forced to apply for specialist posts. However, when compet-
ing for jobs within a speciWc discipline, it is possible that
candidates who have followed a single disciplinary track
are given short-listing priority, because interviewers feel
more conWdent that those candidates will have achieved
certain standards in the course of their Ph.D. studies, unlike
candidates who may have been at risk of “diluting the pure
science” (Taurus) with unrelated material from multiple
disciplines.
In our experience, even if the interview stage is reached,
there remains the diYculty of convincing potential employ-
ers that training has been adequate. One interviewer, fol-
lowing a job presentation on Nigerian farmers’ perceptions
of the impacts of diVerent fertiliser amendments on soil
commented: “This is all very interesting. But have you actu-
ally done any soil analyses?” (The same material had been
the basis of a presentation which received interest and posi-
tive feedback in geography, but was obviously of far less
interest in an agriculture department with a UK focus.) In
the course of the actual interview, the position of the same
interviewer on interdisciplinary research was made very
clear by the statement that the Department had trained
socio-economists who did the type of work which had been
presented, and so the interest was in somebody who would
concentrate on the science, and that the area to be covered
by the appointment would require a candidate whose
expertise was scientiWc. The implication was that specialists
were what was wanted, rather than interdisciplinary schol-
ars. The result of the interview was that an oVer could be
made, provided future research eVorts focused exclusively
on soil biology, and that the interdisciplinary (and over-
seas) elements were discarded.
In terms of reception of research which cuts across natu-
ral and social sciences, this experience is one of the most
negative examples, but in other interviews it was also neces-
sary to ‘reassure’ some of the interviewers that in spite of
there being social science elements, the work was suY-
ciently ‘scientiWc’. This experience is also applicable across
other faculties where interviewers are also concerned with
whether the interdisciplinary candidate is suYciently
expert. These all seem to be echoes of the view of interdisci-
plinary scholars as ‘jack of all trades and master of none’
(K2, Vesuvius, McKinley).
4.2. Challenge 2: Establishing our academic credentials
Having eventually found employment in sympathetic
institutions, the challenge for us to promote our interdisci-
plinary research is far from complete. In publishing our
research, we Wnd that some kinds of interdisciplinary work
do not easily Wnd a place in high-ranking journals, since
these journals have usually become high-ranking because
they target a specialist audience. In some cases, inter- and
multidisciplinary research is explicitly encouraged by a
number of high-ranking journals, but the targeted research
5K2 also asserted that only people taking a ‘traditional’ geography de-
gree could be considered ‘real’ geographers.
L. Lau, M. Pasquini / Geoforum 39 (2008) 552–560 557
tends to be restricted to ideas of interdisciplinary only
across limited, selected, predetermined subjects. Journals
encouraging interdisciplinary research which spans the nat-
ural and the social sciences, or the social sciences and the
humanities or even the natural sciences and the humanities
are extremely rare and are generally perceived to be of
lower impact.
Because our research spans these broad groupings, we
tend to Wnd that it falls between journals, and is thus
returned by editors because it does not Wt the subject area
of the journal, before it is even assessed for its quality.
When we do Wnd a suitable journal, we tend to Wnd that the
editors who genuinely welcome and encourage interdisci-
plinary submissions, still fail to perceive that an interdisci-
plinary piece should be evaluated according to a joint set of
criteria, not two diVerent (and often conXicting) sets of cri-
teria! Thus, in the case of the natural/social science submis-
sions, invariably the articles have been sent out to a natural
scientist (physical geographer) and a social scientist
(human geographer). All too often, reviewers assess a
paper’s strength in relation to their specialisms (even if they
are not fully aware of this mind-set), and its integrative
strength is rarely taken on board. Because of this, reviews
can be very diYcult to reconcile even when they are broadly
supportive.
Our publication endeavours have obviously not covered
the full range of possible journals, but various colleagues
who carry out interdisciplinary research report similar
experiences. For this reason we maintain that if the recep-
tion of interdisciplinary research is to improve, one step in
the right direction will be to change the reviewing practices
of avowedly interdisciplinary journals.
Getting our research published in good-quality journals
is of course just the Wrst move towards establishing our aca-
demic credentials and ensuring that we can maintain our
positions in the academic world. Peer-review continues to
take place in other forms, one well-known form being the
Research Assessment Exercise. The RAE 2008 will consti-
tute a further evaluation of our work, another hurdle that
needs to be surmounted in order to assert the value and
merits of interdisciplinary research. Although the RAE
2008 does make special provisions for interdisciplinary
research, the approach taken is not encouraging.
Referring to the Panel H Criteria and Working Methods
document (<http://www.rae.ac.uk/pubs/2006/01/docs/hall.
pdf>), point 7 of the UOA 32 Geography and Environmen-
tal Studies section reassures that interdisciplinary outputs
will be ‘judged in terms of their overall quality rather than
by reducing them to the constituent parts for specialist
assessment, as experience suggests that such a procedure
often fails to recognise the beneWts and strengths of inter-
disciplinary work’ (p. 42). The sub-panel members are
expected be able to judge some elements of interdisciplinary
work because of their wide expertise and experience in
working in a setting where the combination of diVerent
approaches is the norm. In the event where speciWc exper-
tise does not exist within the sub-panel, cross-referral or
specialist advice may be sought, the panel maintaining the
responsibility for the Wnal judgement of its overall quality.
However, points 52 and 53 under the Generic Statement
on Criteria and Working Methods would seem to imply
that interdisciplinary research is considered to be an output
that, although produced under a particular unit of assess-
ment, actually falls within the domain of another sub-
panel; accordingly these outputs can be referred to special-
ist advisers or cross-referred to other sub-panels.
Thus, whereas the Geography and Environmental Stud-
ies section would appear to understand and acknowledge
the existence of pieces of research which combine diVerent
approaches, and need to be judged holistically, the Generic
section does not. Interdisciplinary research, therefore, has
some hope of receiving a fair ‘hearing’ if submitted to the
Geography and Environmental Studies sub-panel, but
overall, the RAE 2008 proposed solution of sending a piece
of work that does not quite fall under the remit of one par-
ticular sub-panel to another sub-panel (or even worse, to a
specialist) is highly unsatisfactory and very likely to result,
once again, in the poor estimation of interdisciplinary
eVorts.
4.3. Challenge 3: Continuing to promote interdisciplinary
research amongst colleagues
Through our work and experiences, we continue to wit-
ness how diYcult it is to develop truly interdisciplinary
endeavours and research, precisely because even interested
scholars do not fully realise the degree to which their aca-
demic positionalities aVect their stances to and understand-
ings of interdisciplinary research. The following account
will illustrate this point.
One initiative within the Department of Geography of
Durham is to promote interdisciplinary work within the
university. To this end, a small team and one of the authors
conceived and organised a series of workshops from 2004–
05, entitled “Writing, Culture and Identity in a Postcolonial
World”. These workshops were one of the initiatives of the
Lived and Material Cultures Research Cluster of the
Department of Geography in Durham, and sought to reach
out to departments in all the three faculties (Science, Social
Science and Humanities) in discussing topics which would
be broad enough to be inclusive and applicable to as many
as possible.
One workshop was held just before Christmas 2004, and
the topic of the discussion was Weapons of the Weak. The
workshops were customarily conducted using the format of
having two speakers (from diVerent departments) present
for 10–15 min each, and then opening the forum to discus-
sion, questions and debate. In this particular workshop, Dr.
Diana Collecott from the Department of English Studies
began proceedings by presenting a paper on language as a
weapon of the weak, discussing the novel use of signifying,
subversive, and coded language on the part of the dispos-
sessed and disempowered, and illustrating her points with
selected quotations from the work of women writers, such
558 L. Lau, M. Pasquini / Geoforum 39 (2008) 552–560
as Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall and Jean Rhys. Prof. Jona-
than Rigg from the Department of Geography was the
other speaker, and he presented his thoughts beginning
with an introduction to various academic texts which he
brought and passed around, highlighting the work espe-
cially of James Scott, from whose book title the topic of the
workshop was inspired. Prof. Rigg discussed the situation
of factory workers, landless peasants, and the interaction of
these groups with their managers, landlords, and people of
authority.
It was unsurprising to Wnd the topic interpreted so diVer-
ently, and focusing on vastly diVering ideas and subjects,
and indeed the topics of this series of workshops have been
constructed with the express purpose of being broad
enough to be inclusive of many interpretations and to
encompass many viewpoints. However, the speakers, each
having expressed their enjoyment of one another’s presen-
tations, also expressed pleasant surprise at how each han-
dled the topic, and also the manner of presentation. To
each, the other’s presentation (in terms of both style and
content) was a complete novelty, the approach and material
entirely new and previously unknown, and in the course of
discussion, there was a courageous attempt to begin to
understand one another’s starting points and unvoiced
premises, and to explore each other’s theoretical framework
and methodologies.
It so happened that in this particular workshop, the
audience primarily consisted of two groups – staV and stu-
dents from the Departments of Geography and English
Studies. It was clear that for each group in the audience, the
presentation by the speaker not from their department dealt
with material and theorists previously unknown to them.
Everyone realised that the language of the other discipline
was unfamiliar and not entirely accessible, but the eVort on
the part of participants to reach out and understand across
disciplines was a heartening sight to witness.
Nevertheless, for both the presenters and the audience, it
was a struggle to Wnd a common currency of language in
which to communicate and trade ideas, and to Wnd com-
mon intellectual ground on which to meet. The extent of
the struggle was clearly unexpected, which demonstrated
how members of each discipline may be largely unaware of
the degree of specialisation of his or her discipline, assum-
ing their disciplinary language to be common currency, and
not realising each discipline labours under the same mis-
taken notions. It was not until they met in the same space,
in the same forum, and co-presented on the same topic, that
it became clear the extent to which there were conXicting
‘cartographies of comprehension’ and conception, that
there was a very real gulf between the understandings of
each discipline. It was only in the confusion and struggle to
understand one another that members of each discipline
became acutely aware of their own academic positionalities,
and the extent to which these had aVected their initial
response to and understanding of the topic. One’s own pos-
itionality is of course most evident when challenged or put
in contrast with others. It was a revelation to those present
to Wnd that others could interpret the same topic in such
diVerent ways! It is precisely this type of realisation that
represents the most valuable outcome of such a genuinely
interdisciplinary forum, which seeks to integrate the pre-
mises, methodologies and theoretical concepts of more than
one discipline.
Despite the obvious struggle needed to reach beyond
one’s own discipline, the discussion that took place in this
workshop was clearly of value and interest to those present,
especially those most willing to try to learn new languages
of discussion and to build interdisciplinary bridges. The
willingness to engage, despite the struggle it required, was
what augured most positively for the future of such inter-
disciplinary forums and workshops and consequent
research, although the level of diYculty and struggle is a
sober reminder of the huge amounts of goodwill, openness
and eVort which this will still require.
5. The way forward
We have argued herein that understanding attitudes
towards, and consequent development of, interdisciplinary
research largely rests upon individual positionality. Within
geography, the understanding of interdisciplinary research
is also aVected by the understanding of what constitutes
geography, which in turn is also dependent upon position-
ality. As positionality changes, so do individual under-
standings of both geography and interdisciplinarity. The
three concepts are interdependent, and each one inXuences
the others, so that all concepts are in a constant state of
Xux.
Our interviews in the Department of Geography, at the
University of Durham, illustrate how positionality aVects
attitudes towards interdisciplinary research. We have also
provided up-to-date examples from our last three years of
work which also emphasise the importance of positionality.
The question that remains is how we can overcome the
limitations our positionalities impose on us in our quest to
promote interdisciplinary research. On an individual level,
the Wrst step is to recognise explicitly, and to be transparent
about, the fact that personal intellectual histories inXuence
perception and understanding of interdisciplinary research.
The second step is to overcome the deep-seated feeling that
our own training reXects the ‘correct’ or ‘best’ approach to
research, something that multidisciplinary research does
not challenge. The third step is to work closely with
respected friends and colleagues in diVerent disciplinary
Welds; the more removed the Welds, the more striking the
lessons are likely to be, particularly if working together
encompasses the whole research process, from inception to
execution to write-up.
When we embarked on our Wrst paper, we did not imag-
ine how challenging a process it would be. The data collec-
tion process for our paper was relatively straightforward,
but the analytical stage was more problematic. In the Wrst
instance, we decided to analyse the data separately and pro-
duce an abstract for the other to read. Although familiar
L. Lau, M. Pasquini / Geoforum 39 (2008) 552–560 559
with each other’s work, we were bewildered to Wnd that
despite reaching conclusions that we could both agree with,
our approach to data analysis had been completely diVer-
ent, and that we had picked up on quite diVerent points. We
thus had to negotiate a mutually acceptable method of data
analysis, and this was followed by endless negotiations
(read: heated and passionate debates) about the contents of
the article, its structure and presentation. We were sur-
prised to Wnd how extensively our training had shaped our
idea of what made a good paper, and how diYcult it was to
overcome these mental barriers and accept a compromise in
approach and in style. We were even more surprised to Wnd
that we could tussle for a long time over the choice of a sin-
gle word. We realised that words convey and contain not
only meanings, but also feelings, judgement values, implicit
assumptions, and thus Wnding a suitable compromise might
require lengthy explanation and wrangling, and occasion-
ally extensive trawling through a thesaurus!
The overall process was undoubtedly challenging at
times, and writing this second paper together once again
called into question various tacit assumptions and expecta-
tions, the most signiWcant one being whether the theoretical
component should be presented before or after the case
study information. The good news is that the process does
get faster with time and practice. Although we continue to
learn from each other, and we Wnd that each new joint
endeavour raises new challenges, we have learnt to negoti-
ate more quickly, especially with the background experi-
ence of each other’s positionalities and underlying premises
and assumptions.
Although there already exists a considerable range of
exciting interdisciplinary endeavours between cognate dis-
ciplines, there is still considerable suspicion towards inter-
disciplinary eVorts which attempt to span diVerent faculties,
which draw from very diVerent academic traditions. Geog-
raphy, standing as it naturally does at crossroads between
natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities, is ide-
ally positioned to promote interdisciplinary research. If
geographers are serious in their goal to re-discover the
exciting areas of overlap between human and physical
geography, it will be necessary for them to recognise the
extent to which positionality plays a role in the negotiation
of interdisciplinary work. For established disciplinary
scholars, more practice of being interdisciplinary is the only
route to the modiWcation of intellectual attitudes. For
young geographers, it would appear that training in both
physical and human geography is necessary in order to
forge open, Xexible minds and attitudes (which runs
counter to the recent developments in some Universities,
including Durham, which run parallel human and physical
geography degrees).
The next step for geography as a discipline should be to
start developing a set of quality standards, against which to
judge interdisciplinary research, that are not simply the
summation of the standards of good research for human
geography and the standards of good research for physical
geography. Only when geographers stop perceiving inter-
disciplinary scholars as ‘Jack of all trades and master of
none’, and start recognising them as ‘Master of several’,
will geography be able to navigate to the forefront of inter-
disciplinary research endeavours in a meaningful and inclu-
sive way.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all the staV at the
Department of Geography and Department of Anthropol-
ogy, University of Durham who kindly consented to be
interviewed on their views of interdisciplinary research in
geography and anthropology. Many thanks to Dr. Peter
Atkins, who edited the collection in which part of the mate-
rial used in this article Wrst appeared, and to Dr. Jon Rigg,
for his valuable advice on the collection. Special thanks go
to Dr. Keith Richards and the manuscript reviewers, for
reading and suggesting corrections to the manuscript, and
challenging us and stimulating us to make further reXec-
tions on many points in this article.
Appendix
Lisa Lau is originally from Kuala Lumpur, a Malaysian
of Chinese descent. She studied in the Malay medium for
her Wrst eleven years, took Cambridge A levels, and then
completed her BA in English Literature (1997) and MA in
African-American Literature (1999) in the Department of
English Studies, University of Durham. Her Ph.D. focused
on South Asian women’s literature, positioning her
research at the crossroads of literary, cultural, and geo-
graphical studies, and bridging the divide between literature
and the social sciences. Following her doctoral research, she
became an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of
Durham and a researcher at the University of Northum-
bria, working on projects in the Weld of urban and eco-
nomic geographies. She held both posts for a year before
taking up a Wxed term lectureship in October 2004 at the
Department of Geography, University of Durham. She is
currently on a Wxed term lectureship in the University of
HuddersWeld and an Honorary Research Fellow at the
University of Durham.
Margaret Pasquini has dual Italian–UK nationality, and
was born in the UK but spent all her childhood and teenage
years moving between Italy and various other countries,
including Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and Kenya. She followed the
Italian schooling system, and after Wnishing at a Liceo Sci-
entiWco Sperimentale she moved to the University of York,
UK to read Ecology, Conservation and Environment. Her
BSc (1999) was followed by a doctoral programme on soil
fertility management strategies in irrigated peri-urban vege-
table production in Nigeria at the Department of Geogra-
phy, University of Durham. In 2003, she held a temporary
lecturing post for six months in the same department, and
has been employed since October 2003 as a postdoctoral
research oYcer at the CAZS Natural Resources, University
of Wales, Bangor. One of her responsibilities has consisted
560 L. Lau, M. Pasquini / Geoforum 39 (2008) 552–560
of the development of grant proposals, which have ranged
from peri-urban agriculture and indigenous vegetable varie-
ties in sub-Saharan Africa, through alternative educational
systems for herd boys in Lesotho and conXict and natural
resources in West Africa, to water, health and governance
issues in East and Southern Africa. In her Wrst year in Ban-
gor, she collaborated closely with the Department of Inter-
national Politics at Aberystwyth.
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