Workshop on inter-disciplinarity and ageing research – University of Copenhagen

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2012-01-20

Workshop on inter-disciplinarity and ageing research

How do we define inter-disciplinarity, what are the main facilitators and barriers, and what might be lost and gained from engaging in inter-disciplinary research? Researchers from Center for Healthy Aging spent a day discussing and evaluating these issues.

CEHA researchers at the workshop with Guest Professor Tiago Moreira in the foreground 











On 20 January 2012, Center for Healthy Aging held the "Workshop on inter-disciplinarity and ageing research" at the Medical Museion in Copenhagen.

As the Center for Healthy Aging is an inter-disciplinary research center, one of the challenges is to combine and integrate knowledge from a wide range of scientific disciplines. Therefore, the aim of the workshop was to identify the main facilitators and barriers to inter-disciplinary collaboration in the study of ageing.

The workshop was initiated with a welcome by Associate Professor Lene Otto (Program 5). Next, Guest Professor Tiago Moreira held a presentation on gerontology and the changing conceptions of inter-disciplinarity as well as his own experience with inter-disciplinarity. Tiago Moreira is a Senior Lecturer from Durham University, and he has been invited to the center as a guest professor in 2011-2012 in order to inspire and strengthen interdisciplinary research.

Guest Professor Tiago Moreira

With the aim of indentifying facilitators and barriers to inter-disciplinary collaboration seen from different perspectives, thoughts, experiences and ideas were shared through presentations by fellow researchers from the different programs. Presentations were held by Managing Director, Lene Jul Rasmussen, Postdoc Bjarke Oxlund (Program 4), Research Assistant Julie Bønnelycke (Program 5) and Professor Kirsten Avlund (program 3) 

The overall conclusion of the workshop was that the gain of inter-diciplinary collaboration seems to outshine the costs and as Professor Kirsten Avlund stated: "It is worthwhile doing inter-disciplinary research".