In the beginning of December HSSH staff members paid a reciprocal visit to Vytautas Kavolis Transdisciplinary Research Institute (Kavolis Institute) of Vytautas Magnus University located in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Kavolis Institute is a new academic research department that brings together researchers in social sciences and humanities from five faculties of Vytautas Magnus University with the aim of initiating and conducting interdisciplinary research.
A delegation from the Kavolis Institute visited HSSH in November 2023 to learn how interdisciplinary research is promoted and organized in the University of Helsinki. This time, HSSH visited Kaunas to continue exchanging knowledge and exploring the collaboration opportunities between the institutes, as well as to attend Vytautas Kavolis International Seminar “Disciplines and Their Boundaries”.
The seminar included presentations and discussion about disciplinary boundaries and future challenges ahead for interdisciplinary research. In the beginning, quests received a warm welcome and an introduction to the Kavolis Institute by its Director assoc. prof. Jurga Bučaitė-Vilkė. The institute gets its name from a prominent Lithuanian researcher and a public figure Vytautas Martynas Kavolis (1930-1999) whose intellectual legacy and methodological contributions to the fields of sociology, literacy studies, and cultural history, were presented elaborately by Gintautas Mažeikis, a professor at the Kavolis Institute.
The seminar continued with presentations and a panel discussion. HSSH Director Risto Kunelius gave a thought-provoking presentation about discipline and disciplinarity. The presentation contemplated on the history and future of disciplinarity through examining different dimensions of demands and obstacles for interdisciplinarity.
The presentation was followed up by a lively panel discussion about the advantages and challenges of changing disciplinary boundaries. The discussion was moderated by prof. Jurga Bučaitė-Vilkė and included four speakers: Prof. Gintaras Valinčius (President of the Research Council of Lithuania), Prof. Saulius Keturakis (Member of the Social Sciences and Humanities Committee of Research Council of Lithuania), Prof. Hannu Nieminen (Professor Emeritus, University of Helsinki; Professor and Chief Researcher, Kavolis Institute), and Dr. Pekka Mäkelä (Research Coordinator and Vice Director, HSSH). The panelists exhanged thoughts and experiences over a variety of topics. Among other things, the panelists discussed different arguments for interdisciplinarity, the importance of official definition of interdisciplinarity, the challenges of evaluating interdisciplinary research initiatives, and for example, how well the interdisciplinary success of microbiology can function as a paradigm example and an inspiration of interdisciplinarity in the fields of social sciences and humanities.
The perspectives from the Research Council of Lithuania illuminated how the prospects and requirements of interdisciplinarity may look from the perspective of funding research and science policy.
In addition, different experiences from Finland and Lithuania brought up many interesting points regarding the incentives and challenges with developing interdisciplinary cross faculty institutes. After the panel discussion, the seminar audience were given even more food for thought when a hybrid setup connected them to Prof. Gediminas Urbonas (Director of MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Urbonas gave an awe-inspiring presentation about breaking boundaries between science, arts, and activism with ample examples from his successful interdisciplinary and artistic research.
After the seminar HSSH members were invited to have a dinner in a traditional Lithuanian restaurant. At the dinner people got to know each other more personally and continued exchanging ideas and experiences, as well as discuss possibilities of future collaborations.