ABSTRACT
Research funding calls place increasing emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to tackling emergent global health issues. Because of this, global health research teams frequently collaborate across different methodological and epistemological backgrounds. This team approach, however, involves careful consideration to avoid reproducing hierarchical ways of working, particularly when team members include those from the social sciences and humanities, natural science disciplines, and community members. In this chapter, we argue for the value of interdisciplinary teamworking and the importance of embedding multi-directional learning. We draw on our global health research programme, ECLIPSE, which sits at the intersections of health and the environment, and discuss how we collaborated to produce relevant and meaningful impacts on local communities and their health. We highlight how to involve community members in the research authentically and include them as part of the team, while also discussing the importance of a broader team approach to traditionally single-researcher social science methods, such as ethnography. Embracing this interdisciplinary way of working, open to knowledge exchange between academics of different disciplines and between community members and academics, is essential for impactful global health research.
