A Meta Study of Inter-disciplinarity in Natural and Social Sciences: Cases from a G-COE Program

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26560139
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Sociology/History of science and technology
• Research Institution: Okayama University
• Principal Investigator: Ubukata Fumikazu 岡山大学, 環境生命科学研究科, 准教授 (30447990)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): Sato Shiro 大阪国際大学, 国際コミュニケーション学部, 講師 (40454532) ; Kono Yasuyuki 京都大学, 東南アジア研究所, 教授 (80183804)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 科学技術社会論 / ドキュメンテーション / 文理融合 / メタ研究 / 交流 / 学際共同研究

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The collaboration between natural and social scientists is one of the important challenges both for the academia and contemporary society. Taking one research collaboration project as a case study, this research examined how natural and social scientists had academically communicated in the inter-disciplinary project. A project documentation method, including both quantitative and qualitative analyses, was applied to examine detailed communication process in the project. We found several constraints that impeded researchers’ communications. Especially, researchers' tacit knowledge and feeling regarding research “fields” were crucially important, sometimes more crucial than the constraints originated from their academic disciplines.

Free Research Field

東南アジア地域研究、開発と環境