The Challenges and Opportunities of Interdisciplinary Research: When LIS Meets Genocide Studies

Nord, Martin

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/108769 Copy

Description

Title

The Challenges and Opportunities of Interdisciplinary Research: When LIS Meets Genocide Studies

Author(s)

Nord, Martin

Issue Date

2020-10-13

Keyword(s)

• Interdisciplinary research
• Genocide studies
• Document society
• Indexing

Abstract

As ALISE recognizes in this year’s theme, the positioning of LIS as an increasingly interdisciplinary field represents both a challenge and an opportunity. This is true in my own research. The questions I ask are only apparent by stepping outside of the confines of LIS’s usual concerns and yet those same questions can only be answered through the insights developed in LIS. This is the strength of interdisciplinary research. In my poster, even as I acknowledge this opportunity, I also focus on two challenges I face. Sometimes, as with a discipline like genocide studies, perspectives from outside the field seem jarring and evoke negative reactions. This is true with my research. The second challenge is a chicken-and-egg problem: my work raises questions within genocide studies that few others have addressed. Even as the answers to these questions impact my study, they are outside the scope of my research. To explore these opportunities and challenges as I have experienced them, I provide background on the key concepts I bring from each field, how they relate to one another, and the questions to which this convergence of concepts has given rise. I concentrate on the critiques of my research from within LIS, the problem of questions that need to be left unanswered, and how I have used each challenge to further my research. Finally, I use this poster to reflect on how interdisciplinarity affects LIS approaches to research and pedagogy.

Series/Report Name or Number

• Research Methods
• Pedagogy
• Indexing
• Sociology of Information

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/108769

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