MSPH Events

1.00 – 2.00pm, Tuesday 9 June, 2009
Room 515, Level 5, 207 Bouverie Street

Presented by Dr Marion Frere (Deputy Director, The McCaughey Centre), Associate Professor Tony LaMontagne (Principal Research Fellow, the McCaughey Centre) and Professor Elizabeth Waters (Jack Brockhoff Chair of Child Public Health, the McCaughey Centre).

At the McCaughey Centre, we are strongly committed to interdisciplinary research. For us, this means more than working in teams that are made up of individual academics from a range of disciplinary backgrounds – although this is an important starting point. Interdisciplinary research means drawing on the synergies offered by disciplinary interaction (including both theories and methods) to formulate new research questions for problems that cannot be answered within disciplinary boundaries. While our aim is simple – to create new knowledge on the causes of and solutions to contemporary social issues – the practice of interdisciplinarity brings with it a reputation of being notoriously hard to achieve.

This seminar will draw upon the reflections of the three speakers on their own experiences working in interdisciplinary teams. In particular, three contexts for interdisciplinary work will be explored:

• Positioning an upstream approach to determinants of health and wellbeing
• Creating new knowledge on complex interventions
• Advocating for policy innovation

Rather than providing all the answers, this seminar is intended to provoke discussion on the opportunities and challenges that interdisciplinary work offers. We will ask the audience to reflect on their own experiences, and to consider the future of the interdisciplinary researcher at the University of Melbourne and beyond.

For information contact the McCaughey Centre on 03 8344 9101.