National Interdisciplinary Education Conference – Online Meetups, Seminars, and Webinars

The National Interdisciplinary Education (NIE) Conference is an annual event for educators, researchers, policy makers, and students who are active in inter- and transdisciplinary programmes at Dutch universities, university colleges, and universities of applied science. Inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration is currently being celebrated in academic and professional media.

The complexity and dynamicity of the scientific, technological, and societal problems generated by the coronavirus pandemic require an inter- and transdisciplinary approach. At the same time, our teaching, learning, and research is itself affected by the corona measures taken by our universities now that classes and seminars have been moved to online platforms.

The NIE team acknowledges that there is great demand for exchange about our current situation. We want to stay in touch and grow as a community of inter- and transdisciplinarians, and to exchange best practices and ideas. We therefore hereby announce a series of online meetups and seminars. We will meet approx. four times during the academic year. The first edition will take place on June 18, 2020 3-5pm and will include pitches for PhD candidates and short presentations for educators and researchers. We will use the June session to gather input for upcoming meetups, seminars, and webinars. Feel free to contact us, should you have specific ideas.

  1. We organize pitches for PhD candidates and postdocs. Are you a PhD candidate or postdoc doing research in fields such as the Scholarship of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning (SoITL) and beyond, and has your research been affected by corona measures? What solutions have you found for moving your research online? What questions to you have for your peers? Are you curious about their projects, solutions, and questions? If so, we invite you to submit a short (50-100 words) proposal and bio statement for a 5-minute pitch. Send your proposal to M.M.vanGoch@uu.nl and Teun.Dekker@maastrichtuniversity.nl, with ‘Proposal for NIE Pitch’ in the subject line.
  2. We organize short presentations for educators and researchers. Do you teach an interdisciplinary course, and have you found successful creative solutions for online teaching and learning? Are you a researcher in the fields of the Scholarship of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning (SoITL) and beyond and have you studied your own and your colleagues’ ongoing interventions? Do you want to present best practices that your peers may want to implement in the fall? If so, we invite you to submit a short (50-100 words) proposal and bio statement for a 10-minute presentation. Send your proposal to I.vanderTuin@uu.nl and H.deZwart@uva.nl, with ‘Proposal for NIE Presentation’ in the subject line.

The deadline for proposals is May 29, 2020. We will inform you asap if we could fit your pitch or presentation in the schedule of the first online NIE meetup. Further information about the online platform we will use, as well as other details, will be communicated asap as well.

The National Interdisciplinary Education Conference – Online Meetups, Seminars, and Webinars are an initiative of Teun Dekker (Maastricht University), Merel van Goch and Iris van der Tuin (Utrecht University), and Linda de Greef, Machiel Keestra and Hans de Zwart (University of Amsterdam).