Navigating Competing Logics
We’re delighted to announce the third in our series of conversations about the value and challenges of interdisciplinarity in practice, featuring two of the recipients of the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant: Jill Walker Rettberg from University of Bergen, Norway and Rob Kitchin from Maynooth University, Ireland.
This conversation focuses on how researchers navigate competing worldviews in teams or collaborative projects: “Logics: Reconciling different systems for inquiry to build better frameworks for collaboration.”
Any project that seeks to be truly “interdisciplinary” will take longer, offer more challenges and possibly discomfort, especially for experts who have been trained deeply in particular ways of thinking about how projects happen, what research is for. How do project leaders manage deep conflicts between ways of seeing the world? How do interdisciplinary researchers grapple with competing values, priorities, and sense of time? What unlearning and relearning is involved in making interdisciplinarity really work? Or is interdisciplinarity really just a mythical ideal that in actuality is a matter of diminishing one worldview or epistemology in favor of another?
How do interdisciplinary researchers grapple with competing values, priorities, and even senses of time?
This series brings together diverse voices from disparate disciplines like computer science and cultural studies to talk about their definitions of interdisciplinarity, as well as struggles and commitment to this practice. This series also brings seasoned scholars together with Early Career Researchers to share practices across these levels.
Each seminar is unique, but builds from the core premise that today’s “big issues” demand more attention to interdisciplinarity and that everyone benefits when research ecosystems integrate multiple perspectives, even when this is challenging and time consuming.
DERC is co-sponsoring this series on Interdisciplinary Data Science with University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.
Seminar 3
September 13, 2022
6-7 p.m. Melbourne time (9-10 a.m. UK time). Online via Teams.
To get more information or request a link to the session, contact
This seminar features the following participants:
Jill Walker Rettberg
Professor, University of Bergen
Professor of digital culture at the University of Bergen in Norway and Principal Investigator of the ERC project MACHINE VISION: Machine Vision in Everyday Life. Jill’s work develops frameworks for analysing how contemporary visual technologies such as facial recognition, deepfakes and image filtering affect our perception of and relationship to the world. A key figure in developing digital humanities in Norway. Learn more about her work through her longstanding blog, https://jilltxt.net/
Rob Kitchin
Professor, Maynooth University
Professor in the Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute at Maynooth University, for which he was director 2002-2013, and 2021-2022. He is principal investigator on the Data Stories project (ERC, 2022-2027) and been PI on several other interdisciplinary projects. He has authored/edited 33 academic books and over 200 articles and book chapters. https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/rob-kitchin
Annette Markham, Ph.D.
Co-Director of DERC and Professor of Media & Communication, RMIT University
Annette is a methodologist and ethics expert and researcher of digital culture. She has conducted applied research across corporate, governmental, and academic sectors. Currently, Markham co-directs DERC, the Digital Ethnography Research Centre, is founder and co-director of The International Skagen Institute for Transgressive Methods, and the co-director of STEEM, the Center for the Study of Technological, Emerging, and Ethical Methods in Denmark.
Gina Neff, Ph.D.
Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Technology & Society at the University of Oxford
Gina’s research focuses on the effects of the rapid expansion of our digital information environment on workers and workplaces and in our everyday lives. Professor Neff advises international organisations including UNESCO, the OECD and the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. She chairs the International Scientific Committee of the UK’s Trusted Autonomous Systems programme and is a member of the Strategic Advisory Network for the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. Her academic research has won both engineering and social sciences awards.