Thinking and talking across disciplines
The Scientific Retreat, entitled ‘Re-Wiring the Switchboard: Interdisciplinarity, Intercultural Exchange and Academic Community in Context’ took place from 19-21 September 2019.
The aim of the Retreat was to discuss how academic community is viewed by its individual members with a focus on both divides within the academia and the links of the academia to the broader society. In this regard, the covered sub-themes included interdisciplinarity, intercultural exchange, internal organization of the academic community, the role of the academic community in the society and digitalization. The Retreat was mainly structured around small group work, with each group defining a more specific focus for itself. These groups then discussed the following questions and built a model of their discussion using Lego bricks to present to other participants:
-What is the importance of digitalization in your field?
-To which academic community/ies do you belong to? How do those communities intersect/relate to each other?
-What is the role of interdisciplinarity, diversity and complexity in Science?
-How does/should the academic community interact with the broader society?
To round off the Scientific Retreat, the fellows and their families went on a hiking trip together, enjoying the panorama of the Swiss Alps. The evening programme included movie and quiz nights.
