Being undisciplined: Transgressions and intersections in academia and beyond

This paper articulates a view of interdisciplinary derived from actual practice. Based on a distinction between different types of interdisciplinary temperament, the paper proposes five characteristic of ‘issue-driven interdisciplinarity’ in the sustainability field: being problem-based, integration, interactivity and emergence, reflexivity, and strong forms of collaboration and partnership. Each of these characteristics is illustrated by examples drawn from a series of interdisciplinary projects undertaken over the past decade. The paper concludes with some views on how best to institutionalize issue-driven interdisciplinarity in the dominantly disciplinary culture of universities.