ABSTRACT
Some years ago, I was asked to be a junior researcher in a European research project about interdisciplinarity. I was delighted, of course, and excited about the opportunity to explore the problems and possibilities of interdisciplinarity. On the afternoon of the same day, I had a meeting with two experienced academics. I told them I had been invited to take part in a research project and both enthusiastically congratulated me on my luck. They were eager to know about my collaborators, and following that, they wanted to know about the research topic. When I told them that I was supposed to investigate possibilities and obstacles for interdisciplinarity, they both sighed. “It’s a dead end,” one of them said. The other one fell silent. At the time, I thought their reactions simply reflected their personalities, but when I recall this conversation now, I can see that their reactions are actually indicative of the kind of everyday life in the academy to which all scholars can relate.
