If your PhD topic is 50-50%, i.e. 50% in one discipline and 50% in another, do you consider yourself an expert in both fields?

For instance, if your topic is 50% biology and 50% genetics, do you feel that you are entitled to call yourself a geneticist AND a biologist? And would you apply for jobs in both fields?

Sorry, my example may not be the best but I am sure you know what I am trying to say here.

...or alternatively an expert in neither?
My topic is interdisciplinary, being partly medical and partly legal but based with the Law School. I also happen to be qualified in both fields too. I'm only interested in legal academia though

Hi, I had the same type of problem... my research was multi-disciplinary (involved ecological, sociological and geographical studies). Never wanted to say I was an expert in any of them (would've felt a bit of a fraud!) so I just clumped them all together under 'environmental sciences' - could you do something similar?

Sal

Yes, that is what I do. I put my interdisciplinary PhD under a generic umbrella. However, I apply for work in both fields as I have nothing to lose. I also think that the studies before our PhDs do help shaping one's academic persona. I suddenly realise how bad labelling someone in academia can be. Some academic societies are still very traditional and academic members in these fields are still very reluctant to welcome PhD graduates whose work is interdisciplinary. As I always say... we cannot please everyone!

I think interdisciplinary work is the way forward personally.

Agreed, most work is interdisciplinary to some extent now anyway. Mine (from a psychosocial perspective) is apparently 'transdisciplinary', although I mainly treat it as an intersection of psychology and sociology. I just say that I am in psychosocial studies as otherwise people might think that I'm an expert in both or that I'm in social psychology, which is something else altogether. I'd say that I'm okay with sociology but there are some aspects of psychology that I left a long time ago, e.g. psychological disorders, statistics etc.

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Same here really. My work is cross-disciplinary too, but it's very applied. It can be long-winded to explain where my expertise is. How I describe it depends on who I'm talking to - for some people it's 'applied environmental psychology', for others it's 'building energy studies from a psychological perspective', for others I give a one-sentence description of my topic. Luckily there's quite a lot of cross-disciplinary work taking place in my field so it's an accepted approach. The jobs I'm applying for are all cross-disciplinary too, but I look for a social science or psychology element. And I really don't consider myself an expert in anything apart from my own little section of the Venn diagram of all the disciplines looking at my topic!

On edit: cross-disciplinary? Inter-discplinary? Trans-disciplinary? It's all of them really! As so much work is these days (and that's where the interesting stuff seems to be, in my field anyway!)

Interesting post, I think I am running into the same problem.  My PhD is interdisciplinary too. I did 50% finance and 50% psychology based.  I find when I apply for jobs, I dont really fit either position too well. I am not a traditional finance expert (dont do financial econometric analysis) and I am not a psychology expert (dont have experience of designing and running experience).  So my expertise is applied financial decision making.

I am not sure if interdisciplinary research is the way to go with a PhD.  I thought it was a good idea but my PhD was very hard work. I had to write two literature reviews, two methodology chapters and two findings chapters in my PhD.  I kind of feel I just doubled my work....

Interested to hear if other people agree or disagree with this?

Potatoes

Other people who worked on a similar cross-disciplinary topic to mine for their PhD, have been unemployed since the early 2000s. That is one of the reasons that after I graduate (hopefully) I will make a u-turn and only deal with one of the two fields, as I did with my BA and masters. What annoys me though is when I get ostracised by academic societies and communities because I only cover their field by 50%. Saying that, I participate in conferences in both fields, only in some of them I suspect that they give me a poster presentation instead of an oral presentation, just because my topic is not 100% relevant to the strict discipline of the event.

Potatoes - yep, definitely more work doing an interdisciplinary project for those reasons. The most important thing is doing a project you are interested in, and the second most important is doing something worthwhile. I think interdisciplinary projects are more likely to score on both counts.

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Hi Marasp,

I hear what your saying about poster presentations at a conference. I sent in a paper, they give me a poster slot. I dont get funding for posters, so I complained and they bumped me up to a full paper but put me in a poor track. I think its to do with the different research cultures in each field. Like you, I am jumping back out of one discipline and focusing totally on it. Later on, if I have got tenure, I will get back into cross disciplinary work.

Docinsanity, I totally agree with you. Interdisciplinary is interesting and that is why I chose to do my thesis this way. However, with it being more work, it takes longer. So instead of submitting at the same time as other students (who were doing one discipline) I took an extra 4 months to submit. Its an extra 4 months of non-funded PhD work. Maybe, that has put a slight bitter taste in my mouth about interdisciplinary research. Who knows....

Anyway, enough complaining, onto the job hunt!

ps. Good post Marasp.

I was offered a poster presentation at a postgrad conference but I turned it down flat. For one thing, my topic just didn't suit a poster presentation.