The Big Questions
What does it mean to be interdisciplinary? What does an interdisciplinary education provide? How does one teach interdisciplinary social science? Where is the common ground between disciplines? The Objectives and Paper Invitation: One of the objectives for developing an annual conference for interdisciplinary social science is to provide a forum for expanding the dialogue across
our campus to address the “Big Questions” as well as to discover potential relationships between our departments and to find cross pollination with existing local, regional, and international partnerships. While it is a conference for Interdisciplinary Social Science, it is not meant to exclude the physical sciences or the humanities. Quite the contrary, we see the social sciences as a median for connecting all fields of science and encourage all schools to participate. By selecting the topic of urban change and specifically the relationship between scholarship and activism, we hope to enhance UMKC’s commitment to its responsibilities as an urban campus. To accomplish these goals, we would like to invite papers discussing change (or stagnation) in our urban environments. This subject matter is intentionally broad to provide inclusiveness and at the same time possess the necessary specificity to generate productive dialogue and networking opportunities.
