To tackle the increasingly difficult problems the world faces, the team behind the InterSpecial educational initiative believes that the combination of specialisation and interdisciplinarity is key. They are currently developing the programme that seeks to broaden the gaze of specialised students.

What better way to create a programme focused on interdisciplinarity than to work on it with an interdisciplinary team? Alessandra Candian, Annemieke Petrignani and Esther Quaedackers are the core team behind the InterSpecial education initiative of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and all three have a different background. Quaedackers teaches big history courses at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and together with Petrignani, who teaches astrochemistry at the Van ‘t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, came up with the idea of setting up the new initiative. Quaedackers: ‘There already exist interdisciplinary initiatives at the UvA, but those are primarily targeted at students who want to start their studies in an interdisciplinary way. We would like to involve third year disciplinary students who have become relative specialists in their field, and broaden their view.’