I have heard Presidents, Provosts, Deans, Department Chairs, & Senior Scholars beat the drum of interdisciplinary research.
I have seen innovative PhD programs launched touting their interdisciplinarity.
I have heard the word #interdisciplinary used so many times, that I wince when it is introduced into conversations.
Every time that I hear it, I think, this is not going to end well.
Why?
Because despite the rhetoric about the virtues of interdisciplinary work, I have yet to see top uni's embrace interdisciplinary scholarship.
I have yet to see top uni's promote interdisciplinary early-career scholars.
I have yet to see disciplinary leaders celebrate scholars whose work cuts across disciplines.
Rather.
I see uni leaders say the decisions on promotion are disciplinary.
I see disciplinary leaders derogate or urge caution against interdisciplinary work.
I see faculty confused about how to assess interdisciplinary tenure cases.
How do I know?
My work is interdisciplinary.
Knowing the peril, I sought early-career advice.
My senior faculty counseled me to develop a disciplinary core.
I sought clarification.
I turned to my discipline-based mentor & my out-of-discipline mentor - both returned great advice.
Their advice is likely still relevant to interdisciplinary scholars seeking tenure today.
What did they tell me?
First, your goal is tenure.
Tenure gives you the right to study what you want.
So attend to tenure requirements.
Tenure tends to be blind to interdisciplinarity.
Second, you need to have a home.
Tenure requires you to have an identity.
The simplest way to signal identity is to publish in a core set of journals tied to a discipline.
This makes it easier for internal and external reviewers know what you study.
Third, learn the norms of one field.
This proved invaluable.
I listened.
I learned the norms of one discipline which created efficiencies in publication.
Only now, as I am more senior, have I started to learn the norms of a second discipline.
It can be confusing.
Juggling two sets of norms, early in my career, would have been challenging.
Fourth, you can still write interdisciplinary papers.
As long as you signal who you are, you are free to vary the content of the papers.
If the papers were of sufficient quality and tailored a bit to the target journal's audience, that their theories and implications spanned disciplines didn't matter.
Finally, focus on the research problem.
Rather than aspiring for interdisciplinarity, they counseled focusing on interesting problems.
If the theory/methods came from a different discipline, that was ok.
What mattered was that my work made the world better.
The advice to find a home, learn a set of outlets, & focus on interesting problems has guided me for 20+ years.
I hope it helps current early career scholars navigate tenure as much as it helped me!
Best of luck!
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