The challenge of funding interdisciplinary research: A look inside public research funding agencies

Public research funding agencies are required to address pro-actively interdisciplinary research. This article looks specifically at two funding agencies – the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the EU European Research Council (ERC) – how these bodies promote interdisciplinarity, on the one hand, and how they claim to identify it, on the other. Inevitably, this gives the funding agencies some definition power over what interdisciplinary research actually is or should be. At the same time, there are organizational constraints that restrict the funding agencies’ capacity to fully embrace novel ways of interdisciplinary collaboration and investigation.