To celebrate its 20th anniversary, TIK organised a day-long conference on Interdisciplinary in the Age of Uncertainty on March 20th. During the conference, speakers from both outside and inside TIK discussed sustainability, interdisciplinarity and the politics of life. Little Tools' Kristin Asdal and Hilde Reinertsen were of their numbers.
Kristin Asdal participated in the panel on "Politics of Life" chaired by Susanne Bauer, along with Anders Blok (University of Copenhagen), Ingunn Moser (VID), Jessica Mersman (Maastricht University). She gave a talk on Sustainability in the Life Sciences based on her work as part of Little Tools and of the COMPARE project. In her talk, she contrasted the Mertonian ethos of the autonomy of science to a conception of science has having to be responsible, to do good for society - for instance, by contributing to sustainability. She also argued that sustainability in the life science was not just about sustainability out there, but also about the ability to sustain academic lives - careers - as life scientists.
Postdoc Hilde Reinertsen then moderated an exciting panel on "Undisciplined education", with TIK alumni, academics and people working outside academia. The panelists shared their memories of studying at TIK, their experiences with interdisciplinary - as students, as teachers, and as workers -, explained what it had brought to them as well as what could make it challenging. They agreed that the competences that come from an interdisciplinary education, and chiefly the ability to build bridge between experts in different domains, were a key asset.