PhD Course: Interdisciplinarity for complex water problems
- Start:
- End:
- Course fee: € 450 excl. VAT
- Application deadline:
This course introduces PhD students to approaches, techniques, concepts, and tools for designing and implementing interdisciplinarity within their research projects. While PhD research is often individual and rooted in a single discipline, interdisciplinary work typically requires collaboration and integration across fields. The course explores how such approaches can be meaningfully applied in the context of a PhD project, helping students to broaden perspectives and strengthen the impact of their work.
For whom?
PhD students working on water related issues, from different disciplinary backgrounds (engineering, hydrology, environmental sciences, social sciences, humanities) who want to think more rigorously about how their work connects to and can be enriched by knowledge beyond their own discipline.
Prerequisites
Participants should be enrolled in a PhD program.
Learning objectives
- Recognise key approaches, concepts, techniques, and tools, for interdisciplinary research.
- Discuss the theoretical, ethical, and practical implications of applying interdisciplinary approaches to research water problems
- Asses the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach for their own PhD research project.
The course is co -organised by an international and interdisciplinary faculty from IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, TU Delft, and Wageningen University & Research. It will last 5 full days and will combine:
- lectures and talks to present and discusses approaches, concepts and theories on interdisciplinarity, and how these have been applied to study real water problems like river basin management, the water-energy-food nexus, hydrological modelling, and more.
- group work exercises to apply theories and approaches to a case study;
- workshops to familiarise with techniques and tools for interdisciplinary research, and to practice some of the skills required therein;
- moments for individual reflection through journaling on how participants can apply the learnings to their own PhD research project.
By the end of the course, participants will have design in group an interdisciplinary research project, and developed their individual interdisciplinary research portfolio, based on the daily activities and reflections. Participants will present their group work and reflections on the last day of the course.
Programme
Participants will acquire theoretical knowledge and build practical skills for interdisciplinary research: how to clarify your disciplinary contribution, take seriously the perspective of others, find common ground across difference, and creatively integrate different ways of knowing. These four stages draw on Utrecht University’s model for interdisciplinary learning and are applied here to real water problems —
Day 1 – Disciplinary grounding
The course begins by exploring the profile of the “disciplined interdisciplinary” researcher. Participants reflect on their own disciplinary assumptions and contributions, while being introduced to key concepts from the philosophy of science to ground interdisciplinary collaboration.
Day 2 – Perspective taking
The second day maps out the different disciplines present in the group and highlights how each contributes to the study of water. Through dialogue and peer exchange, participants practice recognising and articulating diverse disciplinary perspectives.
Day 3 – Finding common ground
Attention shifts to strategies for bridging disciplines, focusing on the use of “travelling concepts” and “boundary objects.” Groundwater serves as a case study for experimenting with these approaches.
Day 4 – Integration or negotiation?
This day examines what integration means in practice, how it can be achieved, and when it is more a matter of negotiation between disciplines. Hydrological modelling is used as the central case to explore different integrative approaches.
Day 5 – Final group presentation and reflections
The final day encourages creativity and experimentation in interdisciplinary. Groups will present their work and participants will reflect on their learning journey through the Interdisciplinary PhD Game.
Follow up session
Six months after completion of the course, participants will be invited to a follow up session to update each other on interdisciplinarity in their research journey.
Tuition fee
€450 (excl VAT)
PhD candidates from IHE Delft, WIMEK Graduate School (Wageningen University & Research) and Delft University of Technology are exempt from tuition fees.
This course is co-offered by Wageningen University & Research and Delft University of Technology
For more information and register click here
Citizen volunteers participating in a photo-monitoring activity along the Ahuacapan stream in Autlan, Mexico, 2023
Copyright: Enya Enriquez, coordinator of the Vigilando Ríos y Arroyos citizen network
