An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Social Sciences
During the XX century the social sciences have followed different paths of scientific maturation. Economics has developed a dominant paradigm and highly formal techniques of analysis, whereas Sociology and Political Science have remained more internally divided on issues of theory and method. For a long time, scholars in each of these disciplines have tended to overlook the achievements of the others. The low level of mutual knowledge encouraged mutual skepticism about the ability of the other disciplines to generate rigorous theory, to perform sound empirical tests, or to offer persuasive substantive answers to socially relevant questions.
Today the climate is changing. The world's most renowned academic institutions are increasingly experimenting with interdisciplinary research and teaching as the most promising way to address new and ever more complex problems. Overcoming their legacy of separatism, the social sciences have become forefront protagonists of this general trend.
University Departments do continue to offer traditional, mostly discipline-based, curricula. But interdisciplinary, usually inter-departmental, Masters and Ph.D. programmes have been rapidly growing in recent years. This development is in part an outcome of the demand for high and versatile skills in the "knowledge economy" – a demand which often stresses the value of multi-skilling to employers. More importantly, however, it is the very advancement of scientific research that requires the breaking of those boundaries between disciplinary paradigms and perspectives which have too often served to ensure academic conformism, discouraging creativity and innovation.
The establishment, in 2003, of a Graduate School in Social, Economic and Political Sciences at the University of Milan was guided by the idea that an interdisciplinary dialogue generates added value for both research training and research advancement. In 2011 the School has changed its denomination in Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences and today it includes three Ph.D. programmes (Labour Studies, Political Studies and Sociology) that offer a core curriculum of disciplinary training, complemented by common courses and seminars which provide opportunities for cross-disciplinary debates. The rationale is to encourage students to combine the rigorous study and use of the specific tool-kit of their discipline with curiosity and attention towards the tool-kits and research agendas of other disciplines, thus becoming aware that scientific innovation often stems from "contamination".
In our approach, "excellence" in teaching and research cannot exclusively rest on disciplinary specialization, nor on the cultivation of increasingly narrow disciplinary and sub-disciplinary fields, often disconnected from each other. Excellence must also rest on the promotion of an open-minded intellectual attitude, diffident of disciplinary fortresses and pre-defined research agendas. We want to encourage our students not to be afraid of cognitive dissonance or disciplinary "cross-fertilization", because it is often through such tensions that they may find insights and spurs for arriving at original scientific results.
Prof. Antonio Chiesi
Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences Director