Incubating Emerging Fields:
Connecting researchers across disciplines and geographies

Connecting researchers across disciplines and geographies to focus their attention and effort on new questions and methods can support emerging fields of study with the potential to illuminate and address new societal challenges.

Recent research reveals the extent to which academic disciplines are organizationally and physically siloed on university campuses, stifling the emergence of new fields of study that cut across existing knowledge boundaries. Siloed disciplines and campuses can hinder researchers from pursuing new directions of study. Strategic intervention, through collaborative events and activities, is needed to build and strengthen research capacity, especially in new and evolving fields.

The Social Science Research Council has extensive experience designing events, research consortia, and online knowledge platforms that bridge silos and build knowledge networks connecting researchers across disciplines and geographies, supporting the emergence of new fields of study. For over 100 years, the Council has had a deep commitment to improving worldwide conditions for emergent knowledge production at an institutional level, through capacity building, resource sharing, and networking.