Interdisciplinary collaboration is becoming more common as the benefits of making connections across diverse perspectives are recognized. Working across disciplines in collaborative teams is believed to mobilise diverse knowledges to create new ways of approaching the big questions of our time (Mclaughlin & Lodge, 2019). Interdisciplinary work requires deep disciplinary knowledge as well as the ability to enter into the discourses and practices of other fields of knowledge. Moving across disciplinary boundaries opens up possibilities for transaction and dialogue as relationships are developed and new ways of seeing are encountered. This can create a generative space where different kinds of knowledge are combined and coordinated for particular purposes. The research underpinning this paper aimed to investigate the experience of interdisciplinary work though iterative reflective writing informed by co-generative dialogue during and after the project. The conceptual work was infuenced by key literature about interdisciplinary practices with a focus on ‘boundary crossing’ (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011), ‘boundary work’ (Newman et al., 2014) and ‘boundary encounters’ (Fitzgerald et al., 2020). The metaphor of the boundary provided a way of conceptualizing how disciplinary knowledge is black-boxed into familiar patterns and practices which must be transgressed in order to generate new knowledge. This paper came out of the project in which knowledges of illustrative design and English education was combined to lead students from two university courses in the collaborative design and production of narrative texts. We introduce the concept of ‘nodes of tension’ to describe the crucial points at which interdisciplinarity was encountered by the team as the practice of negotiation between the familiar and the unfamiliar. These nodes were identified through the method of co-generative dialogue in which we engaged over time during and after the project.

This paper outlines the co-generative dialogue as a method of investigating interdisciplinary collaboration. Co-generative dialogue is a method of reflexive practice used to examine our experiences with reference to our understandings of disciplinary knowledge and practice, including the different discursive practices encountered in this project. During the co-teaching and evaluation phases of the interdisciplinary work, our conversations became sites of data generation in which we discursively evolved understandings of what happened together (Roth & Tobin, 2004). Co-generative dialogue enabled us to explore different perspectives and draw on our practice to generate theory about interdisciplinary work. Our analysis was informed by key concepts from literature in the field of interdisciplinary practice, such as Kraus and Sultana’s concept of ‘disciplinary identities’ (2008) and Markauskaite and Goodyears’ notion of ‘epistemic cultures’ (2017). Our dialogue was enhanced by our developing insights into the disciplinary traditions and practices that are embedded within academic and professional work, and by our sharpened focus on the emotional labour in which we were occupied as we crossed boundaries and encountered nodes of tension. While boundaries defined what we knew and gave shape to our professional and academic identities, they could be traversed. This boundary crossing generated points which we have described as nodes of tension where uncertainty and unfamiliarity created a significant amount of emotional labour and relational work. Our method involved expanding the dialogue through shared, reflective writing through which our different perspectives were voiced, as in Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of dialogue as the sharing of ‘diverse ideas, discourses, experiences, values and cultures” (Fitzgerald et al., 2020, p. 6). We wrote in response to three co-constructed questions which had emerged from our series of dialogue events during and after the project. The focus of each writing piece was on the concept of ‘boundary encounters’ and ‘nodes of tension’. A similar method can be found in Parr et al., (2018) and (Fitzgerald et al., 2020) in their cross-generational and interfaculty studies.

The paper argues that interdisciplinary work in higher education should be understood as intensely relational and dialogic. The quality of relationships between participants in an interdisciplinary team is crucial to enable the required risk taking and perspective shifting. Trust was a relational quality that enabled the interdisciplinary work to progress and this trust developed over time through relational encounters which were an essential part of designing and enacting the project. Dialogue between familiar and unfamiliar voices was a key element in the interdisciplinary work as meanings were negotiated and new knowledge constructed. The dialogue between different knowledges can make the work transformative but only when different voices are heard. This aspect of interdisciplinary work requires significant emotional labour in addition to the time taken to listen, reflect and co-construct. We argue that universities must be more careful to create the conditions that allow for sustained interdisciplinary collaboration in higher education. This is imperative to avoid the work becoming performative rather than transformational. We see interdisciplinary community of practice as a ‘relational encounter among individuals through which possibilities for growth are created’ (Zembylas 2007) - we grew slowly from our own disciplinary position and individual motivations into something that was more amoebic in character where disciplinary boundaries became more permeable.

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