SSH & STEM Collaboration

Interdisciplinary collaboration starts with dialogue — and dialogue starts with understanding. Cross-fertilisation fosters curiosity, openness, and shared learning across SSH and STEM fields. It helps research teams navigate conceptual differences, enrich problem definitions, and co-create impactful, inclusive knowledge.

Interested in turning disciplinary friction into collaborative strength? Start exploring below.

How Can I Use This Dialogue Aid?

Use this dialogue aid to kickstart interdisciplinary conversations within your team or project. It helps surface different assumptions, clarify core concepts, and develop shared approaches. It’s ideal for workshops, onboarding new collaborators, or structuring transdisciplinary meetings. Think of it as both a mirror and a bridge.

Who Is This For?

Primarily designed for SSH researchers, this tool also supports STEM colleagues seeking deeper integration across fields. Whether you’re an early-career scholar or leading a Horizon Europe consortium, it offers grounding concepts and practical entry points for truly collaborative research.

Where Do the Examples Come From?

The infographic and related materials draw from the SSH CENTRE’s three-volume book series on climate, energy, and mobility policy. Each chapter was co-authored by interdisciplinary teams who shared their experience, methods, and tensions. Additional insights come from survey responses and a co-reflective virtual symposium.

SSH CENTRE Book Collection – Interdisciplinary EU policy recommendations. You can read the books here

What Kind of Challenges Does the Dialogue Aid Help Address?

Interdisciplinary research often faces hidden barriers—conflicting definitions, incompatible methods, and unspoken positionalities. This tool helps teams name these tensions and turn them into starting points for collaboration. It’s less about solving and more about transforming the conversation.

This infographic helps SSH and STEM researchers navigate interdisciplinary challenges and foster dialogue. It highlights cross-fertilisation—integrating knowledge across disciplines—using examples from our three-volume book series on climate, energy, and mobility policy.

Alevgul H. Sorman introduces Cross-Fertilisation and how it strengthens interdisciplinary research.

In this short video, Alevgul shares the motivation behind the Dialogue Aid and offers practical guidance on its use. She outlines how cross-fertilisation challenges disciplinary assumptions and why that friction is not only necessary—but generative.

Ways of Understanding, Knowing, and Working

Can we work together if we understand the world differently?

Explore how epistemological, ontological, and methodological differences shape disciplinary approaches—and how identifying them creates space for mutual learning.

Concepts, Definitions, and Topics

What happens when we use the same words but mean different things?

This section unpacks boundary objects, contested terms, and how conceptual clarity can spark cross-disciplinary breakthroughs.

Learn more about this by reading our Literature Briefs

Actors

Whose voice gets heard—and whose gets left out?

Learn why positionality, relationality, and epistemic justice are critical for inclusive and legitimate research outcomes

Engage with this by reading our SSH geographies – S and CEE Position Statement

Evidence and Methods

Can data be shared when our methods are worlds apart? 

A look into methodological pluralism: how qualitative and quantitative approaches can complement one another—and what frictions to expect.

Participation

How do we make collaboration meaningful rather than symbolic?

Dive into examples of co-creation, participatory research, and challenges around integrating societal actors into knowledge production.

Find out more about different stakeholder engagement approaches by reading our Stakeholder Engagement Infosheets

Policy and Governance

Can interdisciplinary research truly shape policy?

Discover how cross-disciplinary teams contribute to actionable, inclusive policy recommendations—and where gaps still remain.

Discover this gaps in our SSH CENTRE’s Policy Recommendations