Interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, or transdisciplinary?

Abstract

Following the publication of the first issue of interface a number of colleagues got in touch with us, some to congratulate us for establishing an interdisciplinary journal, others to inquire whether we are an interdisciplinary or a multidisciplinary journal, or indeed a journal of area studies. Were the inquiries more numerous, there is no doubt that we would have faced more terms to respond to, as the proliferation of terms in this area of scholarship has resulted in “a sometimes confusing array of jargon” (Klein, 2010, p. 15). Graff, nearing a conclusion of his historical survey of interdisciplinarity, is more explicit regarding the cause of both the confusion and the profusion: