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Interdisciplinarity for a better society

Interdisciplinary education and research have always been an important part of what makes us LiU. This is where researchers, students and collaboration partners meet across borders to find new perspectives and solve complex societal problems.

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What is interdisciplinarity?

In an increasingly complex world, research is needed that can see both breadth and depth in the major societal issues.

How interdisciplinarity takes us further

Two women at a table talking.

Working together for a less biased world

In what ways does modern technology risk giving us a distorted picture of the world? Seeking answers, researchers at Tema Genus are working with colleagues in computer science.
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Machine learning can give the climate a chance

Machine learning can help us discover new patterns and better tackle the climate crisis. Researchers from all over the world meet at Linköping University with the goal of finding and deepening collaborations in this area.
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AI and interdisciplinarity go hand in hand

LiU has gained a strong position in artificial intelligence. In August, the government’s AI Commission visited Campus Valla to listen to researchers and acquaint themselves with supercomputers.
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Electronic medicine – at the intersection of technology and medicine

Swedish researchers have developed a gel that can form a soft electrode capable of conducting electricity. In the long term, they aim to connect electronics to biological tissue, such as the brain.
Ida Lindgren and Elin Wihlborg.

Digitalisation challenges the Swedish social model

Municipalities and other authorities are increasingly required to digitalise. What are the implications for how we build a digital society for all? These are questions that a new interdisciplinary research environment at LiU will look at.
A bunch of people in a conversation.

Objective: finding creative solutions to real problems

ECIU University, the virtual university, is celebrating its fifth birthday. In the university, LiU students have the opportunity to work in international and multidisciplinary groups with the objective of finding creative solutions to real problems.

Interdisciplinary work should be rewarded

We need to constantly find new paths and ways of working to become even more interdisciplinary. We are to contribute to the development of society in the best possible way, and one way that we do this is by having a more interdisciplinary mindset.
Jan-Ingvar Jönsson, vice-chancellor of Linköping University

New award for interdisciplinary initiatives

Portrait of man (Ingemar Ingemarsson)

Ingemarsson’s new donation to boost interdisciplinarity

Cross-border collaboration and interdisciplinarity are gaining importance in our society. This is something that Ingemar Ingemarsson wants to support. With a new large donation, he is setting up a foundation to award a prize for interdisciplinarity.
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The Ingemar Ingemarsson Prize for Interdisciplinarity

The prize  is awarded to one or multiple individuals who are making or have made a significant interdisciplinary contribution at Linköping University.

The Ingemar Ingemarsson Prize for Interdisciplinarity

LiU was born out of interdisciplinarity

Without interdisciplinarity, no university in Linköping? We can’t know for sure. What is certain, however, is that interdisciplinarity has always been strong at LiU and has played a significant role in the university’s development.

In the early 1970s, when LiU was still a university college, the Department of Medical Technology was an important bridge between the Faculty of Engineering and the Faculty of Medicine. This may have been crucial when the government decided where Sweden’s sixth university would be located. They chose Linköping! The university college became a university in 1975.

A few years later, it was time for a new milestone. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Linköping University had been spun off from Stockholm University which meant that its focus was mostly on education and not so much on research. LiU argued that we need interdisciplinary research to solve contemporary and future societal problems. 

And the government listened. In 1980, the Department of Thematic Studies was inaugurated, which meant something new and untried in the Swedish research community. Its work was organised in interdisciplinary themes, where researchers could meet across traditional subject boundaries and address complex issues together. The first themes were Technology and social change and Water in nature and society. These were followed by more and we now find interdisciplinary research throughout the university.

There are also many good examples when it comes to education programmes. Sweden’s first Master of Science programme in Industrial Engineering and Management linked economics and technology, and in the world’s first clinical teaching department, students from various health care programmes have met many patients over the years. Today, there are interdisciplinary programmes and courses in everything from environmental science to e-health that give our students the tools to create a better society.

But we are not done yet. Our best time is soon!

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