Programme designed and coordinated by Maxime Nicolas, University Professor, and the scientific team at Iméra
The Interdisciplinary Dialogues programme serves as a space for experimenting with a free, organic, and evolving form of interdisciplinarity.
The Interdisciplinary Dialogues programme at Iméra, the Institute for Advanced Study (IEA) at Aix Marseille Université, is aimed at researchers who, over a period of 5 or 10 months, will closely examine the interactions and dialogue between different disciplines, whatever they may be (humanities, social sciences, natural and environmental sciences, so-called “exact” sciences, literature, arts, etc.). For residents—whether academics or artists—who submit their projects to this program, the goal is not merely to theorize about interdisciplinarity, but to fully experience it while questioning its nature and limits.
The observation and study of an object that gives rise to an “object of knowledge” can be approached through multiple, sequential perspectives—each of which is discipline-specific—but also through simultaneous perspectives that influence one another to the point of being altered themselves during the interaction. This implies placing disciplines—which may traditionally be ranked hierarchically within the academic structure of universities—on the same level, on an equal footing. It implies that information or knowledge obtained through anarchic interdisciplinarity (in the sense of the absence of hierarchy) can be derived just as readily from an observation or a measurement as from a sensation or an artistic creation. The non-hierarchical approach to disciplines practiced at Iméra fosters rich dialogues in which each project, with its own unique rhythm, finds nourishment beyond its natural discipline. Far more than mere coexistence, this programme aims for a symbiosis between disciplines.
This programme is open to scientific or artistic projects related to the theories, practices, and limitations of interdisciplinarity in academic research and higher education. Research-in-residence projects may focus on the transfer of concepts, models of interdisciplinarity, critical analyses of methodological similarities across disciplines, and the intersections between the exact and natural sciences, the humanities and social sciences, and artistic practices.
The Interdisciplinary Dialogues programme therefore invites proposals for work on either a specific theme or subject of study, methodological questions, or both. More specifically, this programme explores certain aspects of interdisciplinarity:
• Practices of interdisciplinarity. How can disciplines that are, at first glance, distant from one another within the disciplinary landscape be brought into dialogue? How can the tools of one discipline be applied to another? Can common tools be identified? How can a concept be transferred without alteration?
• Ethics of interdisciplinarity. By disrupting established practices in research or artistic creation processes, is interdisciplinarity inherently destined to undermine scientific ethics, or does it, on the contrary, help combat automatic responses and dogmatism?
• The Legitimacy of an Interdisciplinary Approach. How can we identify the improper appropriation of a discipline that may alter the research process? Would the use of concepts from a well-established discipline to venture into the territory of another discipline be considered an intrusion—a breach of the rules?
During their stay, as part of the Interdisciplinary Dialogues program, residents are invited to participate in regular discussions in various formats or in workshop-style meetings led either by the residents and the scientific team or by external experts. The framework and format of this series of discussions and workshops are currently being defined.
As a place of intellectual retreat, Iméra is also deeply rooted in Aix-Marseille within a broad multidisciplinary ecosystem supported by a university that offers all academic disciplines and embeds more than 110 research units. The program coordinator can provide support to help connect, if necessary, the residents’ work to locally developed research themes.
With no publication or reporting requirements, residents can take the time needed for experimentation, digression, or interdisciplinary exploration—much like a walk in which the path itself is the essence of the method.
The Interdisciplinary Explorations research programme was designed and directed by Gabriella Crocco, Professor of Philosophy, from September 2021 to July 2025.
