UNDERSTAND YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES - Networks
Our experience: after four years of working on the project our network is vast. It extends from policy makers, industry (renewable technologies, manufacturing), other academic institutions (including a variety of disciplines), sister projects, funding bodies, members of the public and even a group of home owners with PV panels who regularly provide data about their panels to our associated Solar Farm. It spans a wide variety of disciplines, backgrounds and niche areas, drawing upon our individual contacts as well as those we have built up as a team. Our network is a key part of our project and has contributed to its success and ability to be interdisciplinary.
Why?
The networks a project has are often crucial to how successful that project is - who can it draw upon when it needs advice or expertise? Who knows about its work and can help publicise its successes? What other things are taking place in the name of the project but which are not central to its remit?
The web of networks of a project is often a tangled and complex affair. Project networks may be formed in several ways, for instance through existing networks of team members involved in the project who introduce the project to their pre-existing contacts and networks; or through the work of the project as a team targeting particular stakeholders and interested parties; or vice versa being targeted because of the project’s work and reputation. Thus, trying to make sense of a project’s networks is difficult.
However, the networks a project makes can be a way of representing and understanding its interdisciplinarity. As our experience illustrates, our project’s network is multifaceted and heterogenous, illuminating our broad scope, involvement and impact.
Of course, such a network may be achieved through a multidisciplinary project (using Barry & Born’s (2008) definition this is where disciplines work together but do not synthesize their approaches) – as each project partner brings along their networks, but nothing changes. The nub being that for a project network to be interdisciplinary, all project partners need access to that overall network and can benefit from its creation.