The National Interdisciplinary Education (NIE) Conference is an annual event for educators, researchers, policy makers, and students who are engaged with inter- and transdisciplinarity at Dutch universities, university colleges, and universities of applied science. We want to stay in touch and grow as a community of inter- and transdisciplinarians, and to exchange best practices and ideas. We therefore organize approx. four online events annually, alongside an annual conference. Participants from outside the Netherlands are more than welcome to contribute to the events and conferences.

Inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration is currently being celebrated in academic and professional media as a response to the coronavirus pandemic and other complex and dynamic societal challenges. NIE online events facilitate exchange about our current, multifaceted situation, and its immediate effects on education. How may educational programmes, and scholars of interdisciplinary teaching and learning, productively respond to our situation and its many challenges? Previous editions focused on online teaching, actionability and inclusive education, and integrative interdisciplinarity.

The theme of the fourth edition is Arts-Science collaborations. Whereas in previous times these were almost separate fields, nowadays they are more in interaction with each other. Example are the developments of STEAM (STEM + Arts) and the use of creative and design methods in academic work. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences established an Arts Society which gives, not just humanities scholars, but artists a place to share ideas with professionals in the sciences.

In this edition of the NIE online events, we hope to gather insights in and best practices of the valuable role of the Arts in academic research, teaching and learning.

We welcome presentations on themes such as, but not limited to,

  • Best practices demonstrating the integration of the Arts in interdisciplinary projects;
  • Impact of Arts-Science collaboration in research;
  • Artistic contributions to societal challenges (pandemic, sustainability, inequality);
  • Innovative practices of artistic education for interdisciplinary education.

The fourth edition will take place on Friday March 12th, 2021, 3-5pm CET. We invite you to submit a short (50-100 words) proposal for a 10-minute presentation. Please send your proposal to L.degreef@uva.nl and M.Keestra@uva.nl with ‘Proposal for NIE Presentation’ in the subject line. The deadline for proposals is February 22th, 2020, 9.00am. We will inform you asap afterwards if we could fit your presentation in the schedule of the fourth online NIE meetup. We will be using Zoom. Please join Zoom Meeting with the following link https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/88972805917. Consider subscribing to our mailinglist here.

Feel free to contact us, should you have questions or specific ideas for future sessions.