Interdisciplinary Research, from Modularity to Integration: Humanities on the Horizon 2020 Agenda.

Abstract

This article explores the recent integration turn in interdisciplinary research that is bringing about a qualitative change in research patterns from previous modularity approaches. Taking the European Union’s Horizon 2020 framework programme as background example, it pays attention to some consequences of the expectations of interdisciplinary research, understood in integration terms, on the practice of the humanities. The kind of impact required from innovative research affects not just the integration of the humanities, and the social sciences as well, across the research agenda, something envisioned by research policy especially since 2014, but also a thorough reappraisal of the methodological and technical integration of humanities research with other sciences. The article argues that integrated responses, new syntheses, can be achieved through the questioning of mainstream knowledge by practitioners of different disciplines in scholarly and public debates. Producing innovative results to face major technological and societal challenges relies initially on science policy choices, but then it becomes a matter of both research planning and scholarly practices.