Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Interdisciplinarity has recently become a preferred and highly recommended approach to research in African Universities and Research Centres, especially where the research focus can benefit from different disciplinary approaches. But whereas the move towards interdisciplinary research in other places has been to engender the convergence of theoretical perspectives and methodologies, its driving force in many African universities has been funding. The common reasoning is that it is more cost effective to support interdisciplinary research since the same funding can be used by many researchers and as such garner a higher per capita research participation for such cash injection than would otherwise be the case. This paper discusses the ethics of this approach to interdisciplinarity and its implications for academic freedom, taking into account the objectives of interdisciplinary research. It situates collaborative research funding within the current corporatization and commercialization of universities and research centres and answers the question as to whether the emphasis on funding as a motive for interdsicilplinarity necessarily devalues academic freedom and the quality of research. It argues that despite its illegitimate birth, interdisciplinarity should not viewed as anti-academic freedom or as delegitimizing research collaboration and the cross pollination of ideas that it fosters. It concludes that academic freedom can still be maintained alongside collaborative research where funding constraints makes such intersections inevitable.