PhD Course - On Interdisciplinarity CANCELLED

CANCELLED DUE TO TOO FEW SIGN-UPS

Organizer: Peter Eklund

Lecturers: Peter Eklund and others

Dates of the course: Monday November 17 2016 - Tuesday November 18 2016

Room: The symposium will be run as a two-day event off the ITU-site

Course Description:
This advanced interdisciplinary PhD workshop will involve ‘socialising’ the notion of interdisciplinarity
among ITU PhD students in four ways.

1. Participants prepare a presentation of their PhD research. Each speaker is given 15 minutes, a 10-minute oral presentation and 5-minutes for audience questions. On the first day these presentations will consume most of the time. Presenters are asked to give a clear expose of the method, the experimental platform and the research significance.
2. The audience, after the first day, reflects on the methods from other disciplines that they have heard and are asked to specifically think of ways that those methods could be applied to their own research. Here are two concrete examples:
a. Example 1: a student working on Global Development Tools in PIT lab might think about extending their research to encompass a survey of existing global software development platform use, what would be the conceptual model for the such a survey and how would the survey instrument be developed, tested and deployed?
b. Example 2: a student working on the Alien Energy project in TIP might reflex on how conceptual design or design science methodologies might – if followed – have resulted in different organizational and social outcomes for geothermal ’renewable’ or ‘wave’ energy technologies.
3. Network building is an important part of academic life and research training. A social evening will activities organized by the ITU PhD students themselves further socializes research perspectives via networking activity among themselves.
4. After morning coffee on Day 2, 3 research ‘themes’ will be revealed by the VIPS. Students will self-select a theme and then work as a team to develop a program of work, based on their own expertise, that could for example form the basis for a research proposal to the DFF or the ERC.
5. At the end of the team activity, a spokesperson for the team presents a 15-minute report of the teamwork and their discoveries within the frame of the theme.

Programme:
Day 1
0900-1100 Travel to off-site venue, Symposium Orientation presented on the bus to venue
1100-1230 Check in and lunch
1230-1500 Presentations by Participants
1500-1530 Afternoon Tea and Coffee
1530-1830 Presentations by Participants

Day 1 Evening
1900-2200 Student defined activities, networking and dinner

Day 2
0900-1030 Reflections by presenters – volunteers – on ‘connections’ between their own research
and those from orthogonal disciplines
1030-1100 Morning Tea and Coffee
1100-1330 Theme-based teamwork continues over working lunch
1330-1500 Presentations from each theme spokesperson
1500-1530 Afternoon Tea and Coffee
1530-1600 Summary, conclusions, wrap-up and close
1600-1800 Return travel to ITU

Prerequisites:
none

Exam:
Students will prepare and hold an oral presentation via meeting after the symposium with Professor
Peter Eklund. A term paper is required that is a mock-up of a postdoctoral research proposal.

Credits:
2 ECTS

Amount of hours the student is expected to use on the course:
Participation: 16 hours
Preparation: 40 hours

Participants:
Max number of participants: 22 (the timetable will be amended if more students subscribe to the
symposium)