Radical interdisciplinarity: Addressing wicked problems through a feminist of color approach

Interdisciplinary research can help address wicked problems—complex societal crises that require multiple disciplinary approaches. Our ability to address these wicked problems will determine our collective future. While carrying out interdisciplinary research is promising in theory, it is difficult in practice. Feminist scholars of color have called for radical interdisciplinarity, which combines academic scholarship with creative approaches to create knowledge informed by diverse lived experiences of marginalized groups and their visions for the future. Along with the call for radical interdisciplinarity, we contend that feminist and feminist of color orientations and commitments (e.g., radical listening, care ethics, slow scholarship, intersectionality) are largely absent within research-intensive (R1) university-based interdisciplinary collaborations, and yet serve to critically strengthen these collaborations. To build our argument, we first define and review approaches within interdisciplinary collaboration, focusing on five dimensions (epistemic, social, temporal, symbolic, and spatial) outlined by the Collaborative Epistemic Living Spaces (CELS) framework. We then integrate a feminist perspective within this framework, first defining what these perspectives are and then discussing how they relate to and build on the CELS dimensions. To crystallize our argument, we apply these perspectives to both imagined and real scenarios within interdisciplinary research collaborations, highlighting points for how to strengthen the capacities of collaboration among interdisciplinary teams, especially those interested in working to address wicked problems.