A Place for Materials Science: Laboratory Buildings and Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Pennsylvania

Abstract

The Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, was built in 1965 as part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency's (ARPA) Interdisciplinary Laboratories (IDL) program intended to foster interdisciplinary research and training in materials science. The process that led to the construction of the four-story structure served as the focus of intense debates over the meaning and process of interdisciplinary research in universities. The location of the building, its size, internal design, and functionalities were all subject to heated negotiations among patrons, scientists, and university administrators, to find the proper place of interdisciplinary materials science on the University of Pennsylvania's campus. Building on the recent work on laboratory architecture, this paper argues that the negotiations and controversies over the LRSM building were concrete representations of the broader struggle over the appropriate place of interdisciplinary research and training within a university.

Examining Interprofessional Education Through the Lens of Interdisciplinarity: Power, Knowledge and New Ontological Subjects

“…Similarly to interprofessional education/practice, interdisciplinarity has been widely touted in recent decades as a route to greater efficiency and more effective and relevant ('applied') problem-solving in a range of academic and industrial fields (Barry et al 2008;Choi and Shields 2015;Hackett and Rhoten 2009;Jacobs and Frickel 2009), amid the move to 'Mode 2' knowledge production (Nowotny et al 2003). While its definition is varied and contested, interdisciplinarity involves collaboration across traditional disciplinary boundaries (Cooper 2013), and therefore, like IPE, potentially disrupts the link between exclusive knowledge and professional status (Garforth and Kerr 2011).…”

“…A rare example is Hackett and Rhoten's (2009) comparison of the problem-solving capabilities of students trained within an interdisciplinary graduate education programme versus those from disciplinary programmes, which found interdisciplinary students were more successful in the junior years, but disciplinary students were more successful in the senior years. A number of empirical studies documenting the lived experience of interdisciplinary working have also emerged recently, highlighting the tensions and ambivalence that such collaborations can produce (Choi and Shields 2015;Fitzgerald et al 2014;Garforth and Kerr 2011;Hannigan 2014;Panofsky 2011;Rabinow and Bennett 2012). In the vein of these studies, we wish here to unpack some of the ways that IPE actually operates in practice and the forms that it takes.…”

“…As well as new research objects, the logic of ontology may also aim to produce new subjects by 'developing interdisciplinarity in one person', thereby 'transcending the disciplinary division of labour ' (40). This logic has underpinned interdisciplinary graduate training programmes in the past (Barry et al 2008;Choi and Shields 2015;Hackett and Rhoten 2009); however, the fixity of academic identity (Panofsky 2011: 310) may already be established among graduate students. IPE is therefore interesting as a forum in which interdisciplinary identities may be formed among undergraduates with no prior professional or disciplinary orientations.…”