This paper draws on ongoing doctoral fieldwork in an interdisciplinary and transnational research network connecting institutions in Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Morocco, and France. Rather than assuming interdisciplinarity as a normative ideal, this study investigates how it is practically accomplished, negotiated, and sometimes resisted by researchers themselves. Using an ethnomethodological approach, the research focuses on the ordinary interactions through which interdisciplinary collaboration is rendered intelligible and workable. Empirical materials include participant observation, field notes from a field stay in Addis Ababa, Zoom meetings, general assemblies, and interviews with researchers across various disciplines and national contexts. Attention is paid to the sequential organization of speech, gestures, silences, and role negotiations, both formal and informal, as sites where normative expectations and forms of accountability are locally produced and sustained. These micro-interactions reveal interdisciplinarity as a fragile and contingent order, rather than a given structure. Beyond proposing an empirical approach to studying interdisciplinarity as a situated social phenomenon, this paper also examines how collaborative work across disciplinary boundaries is practically achieved, and what epistemological consequences emerge from such arrangements. It calls for renewed attention to the implicit norms and interactional labor that underpin interdisciplinary knowledge production.

Authors:
Rania Qarouach, Sciences Po Bordeaux, France

About the Presenter(s)
Rania Qarouach is a PhD student at Sciences Po Bordeaux in France, working on interdisciplinary research networks and public policy in Africa.

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