Don’t just assemble an interdisciplinary research team, design one

Funded interdisciplinary research requires more than bringing together experts from different fields. Successful teams combine complementary expertise, clear ownership, shared working expectations and a commitment to the project’s central goal. 

I have been fortunate to participate in several funded interdisciplinary research projects, first as a doctoral student and research assistant and later as a principal investigator (PI) or co-PI. Some involved researchers from education, computer science, assessment, digital media, the arts and other fields. These experiences taught me that assembling highly qualified researchers from different disciplines does not automatically create an effective interdisciplinary team. The team itself must be carefully designed.

This is particularly important for funded projects. Writing a paper with colleagues from related fields can involve different perspectives but a funded interdisciplinary project is usually more complex. In that case, the project might include several PIs, research assistants, developers and community partners working across multiple years. The team must coordinate budgets, timelines, data collection, student supervision and interconnected work streams. 

• Why the ‘lone wolf’ principal investigator no longer works in modern academia
• Campus Talks: How co-creation and interdisciplinarity enrich university outreach
• Collaboration is a skill – here’s how to master it

Design can also inform the project’s culture and behaviour. Respect, responsiveness, commitment and openness to criticism spread from PI to research assistants and staff. So do ambiguity, competition over roles and disengagement.

Success depends not only on the quality of the idea but also on whether the right people are working together in the right way.

Build the team around the problem

When developing an interdisciplinary proposal, it can be tempting to begin with disciplinary categories. For example, saying: “We need a computer scientist, an assessment expert or a learning scientist.” A better starting point is the problem the project is trying to solve.

Identify the capabilities needed to investigate that problem and then invite people whose expertise meets those needs. Each investigator should have a clear reason for being on the project and should bring something that the team would otherwise lack. A collection of impressive names or departments might strengthen the appearance of a proposal but will not necessarily create a functioning team.

The strongest collaborations I have experienced included investigators with enough overlap to understand one another but sufficiently different expertise to make each contribution distinctive. Too little overlap can make it difficult to develop a common language. Too much overlap can blur responsibilities, create competing claims over the same work or leave important capabilities missing.

In other words, seek enough overlap to communicate and enough difference to collaborate.

Be honest about ownership and roles

Interdisciplinary projects can emerge in different ways. Sometimes one or two investigators develop the central idea and invite others to contribute essential expertise. In other cases, several investigators jointly develop the goals and share responsibility for the project’s direction. Both models can work. 

Difficulties arise when the team is not clear about or does not acknowledge which model it is using. Someone described as an equal partner might find that important decisions have been made without their input. Alternatively, a collaborator invited for a focused role might begin directing resources towards work that is not central to the project.

Before submitting a proposal, discuss what ownership means in practice. Who will make decisions about the overall direction? Which investigator will lead each work stream or strand? How much time, funding and student effort should each component receive? What happens when priorities compete?

These conversations do not signal distrust. They help ensure that everyone enters the project with the same understanding of their role.

Discuss disciplinary differences early

Disciplinary differences can run wide and deep. For example, researchers might use the same words – such as “model”, “learning”, “validation”, “creativity” or “success” – but mean very different things. Disciplines might also follow different conventions for authorship, student supervision, methodological quality and the division of intellectual credit.

These differences are easy to overlook when researchers are preparing an exciting proposal but they need to be surfaced and discussed upfront. Rifts become much harder to resolve when a paper is ready for submission, students receive conflicting directions or one part of the project begins consuming more resources than expected.

Teams can prevent many of these problems with a brief collaboration agreement at the beginning of the project. It should address:

• responsibilities and expected deliverables
• meeting attendance and communication
• decision-making within and across work streams
• supervision and allocation of research assistants
• authorship and publication expectations
• procedures for revisiting priorities when the project changes.

The document does not need to anticipate every possible situation. Its purpose is to clarify assumptions that might otherwise remain invisible.

Create a culture that reaches the whole team

As a doctoral student, I observed a particularly effective interdisciplinary collaboration among senior researchers. They had a strong shared understanding of the project’s purpose, respected what each person brought to the work and maintained regular communication. During meetings, the project leader asked team members what they were interested in doing, what relevant experience they had and how they wanted to contribute. Research assistants formed working groups, received feedback from multiple investigators and understood how their tasks supported the larger goal.

Later, I experienced similarly effective collaborations as a co-PI. Meetings moved quickly because people arrived prepared. Team members could challenge one another’s ideas without making criticism personal. Responsibilities were balanced, updates connected the different work streams and support was always present.

Successful interdisciplinary research does not require constant agreement. It requires a team in which disagreement can improve the work without threatening relationships or distracting from the shared purpose. That becomes much more likely when we treat team-building as a core part of designing the research.

Declaration of AI use: The author used ChatGPT to organise his original reflections and copy-edit. He carefully reviewed and revised the text and takes full responsibility for its ideas, examples and final content.

Seyedahmad Rahimi is associate professor in the College of Lifetime Learning at Georgia Institute of Technology.

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.