Improficiency and the Professionalization of Undisciplined Practices

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter’s author interrogates the spaces and knowledges of interdisciplinarity by exploring the relationship between alternative understandings of expertise (improficiency), academic career prospects (professionalization), inter-/disciplinary spaces (the undisciplined), and research practices. She considers the implications of interdisciplinarity for the spatialization of disciplines themselves, emergent knowledges, the academics generating them, and understandings of expertise. She argues that the prefix ‘inter-’ is most appropriate in individual (not team-based) contexts, as the co-location of different knowledges in the body of one researcher holds particular promise, despite this promise being underappreciated. In this chapter, she offers a variegated conceptualization of inter-/extra-disciplinary spaces; a refined understanding of expertise across interdisciplinary practices; and suggestions as to how academic institutions can better support interdisciplinary careers. Rather than progressively dismantling interdisciplinary spaces, knowledges, and practitioners, proponents of different disciplines can validate and help to realize the potential for interdisciplinary work to ricochet productively among the disciplines, rather than continually policing the borders between them.