At UW Bothell, interdisciplinary research and inquiry is one of the core learning objectives within the school of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. Interdisciplinary research draws from knowledge and literature throughout various interconnected areas of study. As a student within the Media and Communications Studies major, my research has spanned and drawn upon subjects including law, psychology, and the natural sciences, in addition to those within my major. Being able to incorporate and connect information throughout seemingly unrelated fields allows for a critical, informed understanding of the interconnectedness of differing subjects. Additionally, interdisciplinary inquiry creates space for students like myself, to think about and question the ways in which the world works based on information from a wide range of sources, as opposed to a homogenous group of sources concentrated in one field of study. Many times, I have found my thoughts and questions challenged or proved wrong, after doing research in other fields. By taking an interdisciplinary approach to research, and coursework in general, I have learned the importance of broadening the scope of research in order to gain a more holistic understanding of a question or topic. The following two research papers demonstrate the skills I have developed within the scope of interdisciplinary research and inquiry.

 

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Mental Health Impacts on Communities Affected by Wildfire

 

For this paper that I wrote for my advanced seminar class Climate Anxiety, Grief, and Hope, I chose to write about the ways in which people in frontline communities are impacted by wildfires, focusing specifically on mental health and wellbeing as a direct result of these fires. I started writing this paper in late May/early June when wildfire season began to threaten my grandmother’s farm, which inspired me to write about and research this topic. Since this specific field is just growing, I had to rely on research and information from sources outside of the scope of ecological grief and anxiety. I found myself drawing mainly from physiological studies, ecological data, and literature from top researchers in the field. Knowing that I could not just use resources from the field of ecological grief and anxiety, as it is a relatively small pool of resources, I knew that this paper would be more effective if I included resources that would enhance and justify the points I was trying to make and the questions I was trying to answer.

 

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Rights and Responsibilities of the Disembodied Mind

 

The final project for the course Science, Technology, and Society was to build upon what we had learned in the quarter to create a set of laws, or guidelines, determining the rights of a disembodied mind, assuming the technology existed. There are five overall categories within this paper, and for each of them I determined the question based on my understanding of the topic, and attempted to answer using relevant literature; each section advises how to handle the disembodied mind in different situations. My questions led me to research regarding U.S. labor laws, the rights of military personnel, as well as the concept of genetic ownership. Synthesizing this information from varied, differing sources, and into a set of recommendations allowed me to explore interdisciplinary avenues and draw information from news articles, peer reviewed articles, and even a documentary short film. While this research and writing format differ from the paper described above, I believe that writing this set of recommendations allowed me to step out of the more traditional way of writing I had been accustomed to, and embrace something different, using similar research and inquiry skills.