Interdisciplinary public engagement: untapped potential?

Abstract

Public engagement projects developed by university-based academics tend to focus on specific academic topics. Yet, the problems and topics that our audiences want to engage with are broad, challenging, and can’t be explained or solved by a single academic subject or expertise. In this article, we capitalise on our experience working with academics at the University of Oxford, and a workshop for public engagement professionals that we co-organised with the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement, to advocate for a novel approach: interdisciplinary public engagement (public engagement projects that bring together academics from several academic disciplines). We consider the potential benefits and the challenges of this approach and provide examples of how it is starting to be explored.