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Sustaining and Enjoying a Multi-disciplinary, Multi-department, Multi-campus Research Collaboration on Women in Engineering

Abstract

The development of a successful, long-term, multidisciplinary research collaboration is not something that happens easily or quickly. Since 2001 the authors have collaborated in research projects related to women in engineering, in both the professional workplace and education contexts. What is unusual about this particular research group is the widely varying discipline backgrounds of the members. The group comprises professors in feminist economics, sociology, education and civil engineering. The collaboration has faced numerous challenges in terms of geography, methodology, availability, finding a common language and understanding, differing practice in the various disciplines with respect to writing for publication and what grants count. This paper identifies four inter-related themes that have emerged from our reflections on our experience of gender-based multidisciplinary research.

Introduction

Multidisciplinary research has received considerable support in recent years. In the resource starved climate of the current Australian neo-liberal university [1], [2] a multidisciplinary approach is thought to operate in ways more effective for real-world, complex problems – and hence be more attractive for industry funding – than when research occurs within the boundaries of just one discipline, faculty or department. The success of multidisciplinary research is evident in engineering education. For example, Borrego & Newswander [3] cite acceptance statistics for journal articles submitted to the Journal of Engineering Education as “20-30 percent when a social scientist is a member of the author team, but only 2-3 percent if the authors were all engineers” (p. 123). However, although we are increasingly urged to work collaboratively and to adopt multidisciplinary approaches by our University leaders, the incidence of multidisciplinary work is relatively rare.

Our multidisciplinary team comprises four professors in civil engineering, economics, education and sociology. Team members have a common interest in gender issues and each had previously published in related areas. The civil engineering professor has extensive industry experience, had chaired the national Women in Engineering committee in Australia and has published in engineering education and women in engineering. The education professor is known for her expertise in the area of girls and mathematics, and debates around co-educational versus single sex schooling. Both the economist and the sociologist are known for their expertise in areas relating to women and work – the sociologist particularly in the area of gender, work and the trade union movement, and the feminist economist in the area of public policy. The non-engineer members of the team have also been working in critiques of their own discipline areas from feminist perspectives. All team members share a commitment as feminist scholars to making a contribution to the research on women and work. However, the apparent commonality of approach and interests between us had to be re-woven once we started to grapple with the collaborative study of women in engineering.

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Mills, J., & Gill, J., & Franzway, S., & Sharp, R. (2009, June), Sustaining And Enjoying A Multidisciplinary, Multidepartment, Multicampus Research Collaboration On Women In Engineering Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--4819