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Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien

Betwixt and Between? Reflections on Interdisciplinary Work in Veterinary Ethics

In the academic world, the term interdisciplinarity is on everyone's lips. Mostly with positive connotations and downright en vogue, it encompasses a way of working that addresses complex problem areas by bringing together several disciplines and seeking comprehensive approaches to solving them. Karl Popper was already of the opinion that it is not the individual disciplines that are researched, but rather their problems that are the focus of research. He stressed that “we study not disciplines, but problems. Often problems transcend the boundaries of a particular discipline”.

In recent decades, interdisciplinary work has become institutionalized in many ways: journals, research institutions commited to theoretical, practical, and methodological interdisciplinarity, open calls for funding that focus on the promotion of interdisciplinary projects. The establishment of these research institutions thereby breaks down the traditional faculty distinctions of technical, natural, social sciences, and humanities.

So far so good, however, the question arises what does it need to successfully carry out research in an interdisciplinary setting? This question can address different dimensions and levels when discussing interdisciplinary work in academia: First, it can focus on the individual researcher including professional skills, social competencies and (inter)disciplinary identity required. Second, it can address specific issues in relation to the development of research projects including an adequate problem statement, formulation of research questions and hypotheses as well as thoughts about used methods in interdisciplinary research (groups). Third, this question can focus on a more institutional level addressing necessary infrastructure, agreement on (institutional) quality standards, scientific criteria and forums that provide suitable infrastructure for interdisciplinary work.

In the context of the workshop, these three different levels and dimensions will be in the limelight of interactive discussions and group work by focussing on the following questions:

  1. What chances and challenges do we face in interdisciplinary research projects?
  2. What skills and infrastructure do we need to successfully work with colleagues from multiple disciplines?
  3. What is a research-worthy problem for interdisciplinary projects?
  4. How to come up with a precise research question and innovative research design when working with multiple disciplines?

Max. Number of Participants:

25

Svenja Springer

Organizers

Svenja Springer 

Svenja Springer has been a university assistant at the Unit of Ethics and Human-Animal Studies at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna since 2021. She graduated in veterinary medicine from the Vetmeduni Vienna in 2014. From 2014 to 2018, she investigated Austrian veterinarians’ attitudes towards euthanasia in the course of a doctoral program at the Vetmeduni Vienna. From 2017 to 2022, she was enrolled in a double PhD program at the University of Copenhagen and worked on her research project The Internal Morality of the Veterinary Profession: An Empirically Informed Ethical Analysis of Modern Small Animal Practice. This project focused on an empirical investigation of ethical challenges that emerge due to various developments in small animal practice including the examination of pet health insurance, the use of internet resources in the veterinary context as well as veterinarians’ decision ethics orientations during clinical consultation. Springer is currently working on an international project on pet owners’ expectations of modern small animal practice. Further, she received a research funding to empirically investigate the growing field of hospice and palliative care in small animal practice, which began in July 2022.

 

Zsofia Viranyi

Zsofia Viranyi

Zsófia Virányi has been a senior researcher at the Unit of Comparative Cognition at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna since 2011. She is a biologist who gained her PhD in ethology in 2004 and habilitated in 2020 in animal cognition and human-animal interactions. Between 2005 and 2011, she was a postdoc fellow at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution & Cognition Research, Altenberg, Austria and at Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna. Between 2008 and 2013, she was the coordinator of the ESF Research Network “Evolution of Social Cognition”. As a founder of the Clever Dog Lab and the Wolf Science Center, she has conducted most of her research on dogs and wolves to study the effects of domestication on dogs’ reasoning and social learning abilities, communication and cooperation with humans and conspecifics. Deeply interested in how the understanding of human and non-human animals differ and compare to each other, she often compares canine cognition to children, primates and, most recently, to pigs (ared.stir.ac.uk).

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