Marine sustainability, leadership and interdisciplinarity – more than just buzzwords?
When topics like “what is interdisciplinarity” and “to what degree does my work actually contribute to marine sustainability” came up at meetings, a group of three SEAS postdoc fellows wanted to take the discourse to a more scientific level.
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“SEAS aims to devise a flagship programme at UiB of world-class training and support that will guide and support the SEAS fellows to reach professional maturity as successful leaders in both academic and non-academic sectors, equipped with transferable skills in inter- and trans-disciplinary research and intersectoral collaboration”, reads a phrase in the “Goals and commitments” statement of the SEAS project. Three of the SEAS fellows have dived deeper into understanding and defining marine sustainability, leadership, and interdisciplinarity as core parts of the SEAS project.
The group consists of SEAS postdoc fellows Aistė Klimašauskaitė, Thomas Völker and Claudiu Eduard Nedelciu. When topics like “what is interdisciplinarity” and “to what degree does my work actually contribute to marine sustainability” came up at meetings, they wanted to take the discourse to a more scientific level, and organized interviews and group discussions aimed at a more in-depth understanding of how these topics are perceived and implemented in the SEAS project. The group presented some of their findings at the recent 2024 Annual Meeting.
The SEAS project is an interesting case study, as it is a very large research programme consisting of 36 post docs across most faculties at UiB.
– We wanted to discuss how marine sustainability relates to what we're doing, and to talk about our experiences with interdisciplinary work with SEAS colleagues from other fields. Or are these just buzzwords added to the project to make it more appealing? Among what we found, was that even though marine sustainability might not be at the core of every project at SEAS at a first glance, there is actually a broad variety of ways in which marine sustainability is integrated in the research projects of our SEAS colleagues. In a sense there are multiple marine sustainabilities says Thomas Völker.
Variety of scientific fields
–SEAS fellows work in a wide variety of scientific fields from the social to the natural sciences. This means that there is a somewhat different perception of what interdisciplinary is, and what hinders or enables interdisciplinarity. The SEAS project is an interesting case study, as it is a very large research programme consisting of 36 post docs across most faculties at UiB. But is quantity alone sufficient for fostering interdisciplinarity? This is one of the aspects we´re exploring in this project, says Claudiu “Ed” Eduard Nedelciu.
– We found that many of the SEAS fellows want to work across boundaries of different disciplines or different departments, to avoid the silos and do interdisciplinary work. But some also felt obligations to their institutes sometimes limit their ability to collaborate outside of their projects. Also, as a post doc with a 3-year contract, you have to think about the next position. And interdisciplinary work is not necessarily what counts when academic performance is "measured”, says Aistė Klimašauskaitė.