Transdisciplinary Research: Deconstructing Academic Silos

Featuring Andrew Vosko

Members of WVU, local nonprofits, government agencies and community stakeholders are invited to WVU’s first transdisciplinary research colloquia, held over a series of virtual lectures in spring 2021.

Transdisciplinary research is a form of research that transcends disciplinary boundaries. One way it accomplishes this is by incorporating community based or other participatory approaches to research into its framework. Transdisciplinary research actively seeks to integrate non-academic partners as equal members of a project or team. No one academic discipline has the breadth, scope and knowledge to confront large or “wicked” social problems alone. But WVU researchers learning together with non-academic partners in government, industry, nonprofits and beyond can introduce new ideas, make sustainable change and develop innovative and holistic approaches to all forms of social inequity.

About the Speaker

Andrew Vosko is associate provost and director of the Transdisciplinary Studies program at Claremont Graduate University, where he also serves as clinical associate professor. He earned his PhD in neuroscience from UCLA, where he trained in the Laboratory of Circadian and Sleep Medicine, Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, and the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center. His scholarly and teaching interests include biomedical, interprofessional and transdisciplinary education; art-science integration; medical humanities; gender and sexual minority healthcare; and neurobehavioral sleep medicine.

Since 2012, he has taught neuroscience, physiology, histology and medical ethics to students across a diverse range of integrative health and medical tracks with faculty appointments at Southern California University of Health Sciences and at Rocky Vista University. In Claremont, his courses have focused on transdisciplinary approaches to the world’s complex and ‘wicked’ problems, including sustainability, inequality and disease.

Vosko’s scholarly work involves topics that range from neural circuit function to epistemology in education, and he has received research grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. He works closely with scholars and administrators across Claremont, both within the institution and across the consortium, to facilitate scholarly and educational collaboration for community engagement, innovation and positive social impact.