Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities

Abstract Interdisciplinarity, as a response to the increasing complexity of human issues, has evolved from an academic ideal into an imperative in contemporary research, particularly within the humanities. The publication of this special issue, featuring seven selected articles that are the product of a lengthy process of evaluation and refinement, presents a valuable opportunity to discuss not only the achievements in this field but, more profoundly, the structural and epistemic challenges confronting such studies. What unites these articles and other pioneering theoretical works is their effort to move beyond mere celebration of this approach and enter the domain of its critique and pathology. In this journey, three fundamental challenges warrant consideration:

1.The Challenge of 'Integration': From a Unifying Ideal to Pluralist Realities
The concept of 'Integration' has for decades been considered the canonical cornerstone of successful interdisciplinary work (Rana et al., 2025; Frodeman et al., 2017). This perspective, rooted in the ideal of the unity of science, viewed success as the merging of concepts, methods, and epistemic frameworks from different disciplines. However, as seen in some of the most recent research in the field (Barry, 2020; also: Darzi, 2019) and discussed in the present article titled "Dis-integration: A Pathology of Integrative Cross-Disciplinary Models," this absolute necessity is being re-examined. Cases such as the successful collaboration in evolutionary game theory demonstrate that profound and transformative exchange between disciplines can occur without leading to their negation and complete unification (Grüne-Yanoff, 2016). Accordingly, each discipline can be transformed through this dialogue while retaining its methodological identity. This raises fundamental questions: Is integration the sole aim of all interdisciplinary research? Or can we speak of 'symbiotic successes' without complete integration? Engaging with this question, also referenced in the article "Explaining and Categorizing the Contemporary-Making Current in Theoretical Interdisciplinary Studies," is one of the distinguishing features of this issue.

2. The Challenge of the Theory-Practice Gap: From Mechanistic Processes to the Complex Lived Space
The second challenge stems from the apparent gap between the abstract level of interdisciplinary theorizing and the tangible yet ambiguous reality of research in practice. Prevailing models of the interdisciplinary research process (Repko, 2021) often outline linear, mechanistic steps, as if convergence could be achieved through a standard, prescriptive protocol. This view reveals the rigidity and lifelessness inherent in many of these models. In contrast, the reality of interdisciplinary research, as evidenced by the ethnographic study of the Chilean climate science center (Undurraga et al., 2023) and the article "Examining the Methodology of Comparative Qualitative Content Analysis," is replete with ambiguity, daily negotiation, cultural-epistemic differences, and creative adaptations. Success in this space stems less from following a predetermined template and more from communicative capacities, resilience, and collaborative work in confronting productive dissonances . This gap has rendered the methodologies taught in textbooks often inadequate for guiding researchers through the turbulent field of real-world interaction with other disciplines—a problem directly addressed by the article "The Attitudinal and Methodological Requirements and Imperatives of Interdisciplinary Theorizing."
3. The Challenge of the Disconnect Between Theorists and Field Practitioners
A direct consequence of the previous challenge is the creation of a profound divide between two communities: on one side, theorists and philosophers of interdisciplinary studies who analyze key concepts, and on the other, field researchers who, in practice and to solve concrete problems, inevitably traverse other epistemic domains (Moran, 2002). For the latter group, abstract discussions often seem esoteric, impractical, and lacking immediate necessity. This disconnect has led to a situation where a researcher, relying on intuition and general understanding, may conduct deep and successful interdisciplinary work without the slightest familiarity with the specialized literature of this field. This duality is clearly traceable in the distinction between the theoretical discussions presented in the article "A Pathology of Orientalists' Interdisciplinary Studies on the Ecology and Environment of the World" and the practical, applied necessities raised in the article "An Interdisciplinary Approach to Reading the Sense of Place from the Perspectives of Architecture and Cinema." This distance deprives theory of the richness of practical experience and strips practice of deeper theoretical insights.
The articles compiled in this special issue each respond, in their own way, to part of these threefold challenges, all signaling a move beyond mere description and into a phase of critique and solution-seeking. As emphasized in the systematic review by Rana et al. (2025) on doctoral education and underscored by Klein (2021), our task as a scholarly community is not to ignore these tensions but to acknowledge, study, and manage them. We must move towards a state where active epistemic work and sustained dialogue between disciplines replace rigid, pre-conceived models. This special issue is a step on this difficult yet essential path, with the hope of serving as a bridge between thinking about interdisciplinarity and living it within the complex, dynamic space of contemporary science.
 
 

Abstract Theorizing in interdisciplinary domains of the humanities and social sciences is considerably more demanding than disciplinary theorizing within these fields. Beyond a theoretical framework and research methodology—both indispensable for any form of theorizing—interdisciplinary theorizing requires a range of additional contextual, cognitive, cultural, and personal conditions. This article seeks to conceptualize and articulate these conditions as the requirements and preconditions of interdisciplinary theorizing. The central question guiding the study is: apart from theoretical frameworks and methods (which are not the focus of this article), what requirements and preconditions are necessary for interdisciplinary theorizing in the humanities and social sciences? The article classifies these requirements into four interrelated domains: scientific, cultural, cognitive, and personal. Scientific requirements pertain to principles governing knowledge production and research practices. Cultural requirements refer to institutionalized attitudes, dispositions, and modes of conduct that shape scholarly behavior and outlooks. Cognitive requirements encompass mental, linguistic, and intellectual capacities essential to theorizing. Personal requirements address the psychological traits, motivational orientations, and personality characteristics of the theorist. In this study, “requirements and preconditions” denote the capacities, competencies, and characteristics necessary for effective interdisciplinary theorizing. Methodologically, the research employs interpretive phenomenology and conceptual modeling.

Abstract Contemporary academic research increasingly addresses problems that exceed the analytical capacity of a single discipline and therefore require diverse forms of disciplinary interaction. Although multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity have been widely examined, the quality and logic of knowledge integration within these frameworks remain in need of more precise conceptual clarification. This article focuses on three relatively underexplored yet fundamental concepts—hybridization, amalgamation, and interdisciplinary rituals—and aims to develop an analytical framework for a deeper understanding of disciplinary integration processes. The study adopts a qualitative approach based on conceptual analysis and a systematic review of relevant theoretical literature, with key works selected purposively for their conceptual relevance to disciplinary interaction models. The findings indicate that hybridization represents an in-between and often unstable mode of interaction among disciplines, enabling dialogue and cognitive exchange without full integration. In contrast, amalgamation refers to deeper and more stable forms of knowledge integration that result in the emergence of new wholes with novel properties. Furthermore, interdisciplinary rituals, understood as recurring practices in collaborative research contexts, play a significant role in stabilizing shared language and fostering collective research identity. The analysis demonstrates that the analytical application of hybridization and amalgamation is largely confined to the frameworks of multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity. A clear distinction between these concepts contributes to the theoretical refinement and qualitative evaluation of integrative research practices.

Abstract In interdisciplinary studies focused on contemporization, a comprehensive model that accounts for all its existential dimensions is still lacking. Accordingly, this article aims to explain and classify the discourse of contemporization within interdisciplinary theoretical studies, assess the capacities (strengths and weaknesses) of various academic disciplines in understanding and adapting to the process of contemporization, and examine the impact of integrating different fields of knowledge—through an interdisciplinary approach—on enhancing the understanding of contemporization.This study employs content analysis using an inductive reasoning approach, combined with a systematic literature review. A quantitative–qualitative content analysis was conducted on Persian-language sources related to contemporization. Based on frequency, the reviewed studies are categorized into four domains: architecture and urban planning, art, religion, and literature. Each domain contains subcategories that are thematically aligned with the main research topic. Among these domains, architecture and urban planning—having the highest number of core topics—has played a pioneering role in this field. Another major contribution of this study is the presentation of a model for the discourse of contemporization.The findings indicate that contemporization is an uneven process, as the pace at which different fields of knowledge adapt to contemporary developments varies, leading to asynchronicity and, consequently, incompatibility. Although individual disciplines demonstrate limited capacity for comprehensively understanding the process of contemporization on their own, interdisciplinary interaction at three levels—fundamental, methodological, and applied—enhances the overall capacity of the system. The four scientific domains can contribute to the process of contemporization in two fundamental ways: first, by redefining the dialectical relationship between tradition and modernity within their specialized fields; and second, by acting as cultural translators that render abstract concepts of modernity into a language accessible to society.

Abstract This article introduces and systematizes a novel qualitative research method termed Qualitative Comparative Content Analysis (QCCA). Conceptualized as a fully qualitative and inter-paradigmatic approach grounded in abductive logic, QCCA integrates inductive meaning discovery with deductive theory-driven analysis through a unified comparative protocol. The method is developed using a qualitative–developmental research design, based on a systematic review and qualitative meta-synthesis of methodological literature published between 2000 and 2025. The resulting framework is operationalized in five analytical stages: data preparation, hybrid coding (open and directed), fuzzy normalization and multi-layered comparison, interpretation, and representation of findings. To assess its analytical capacity, QCCA is applied to a comparative case study of the concept of security in the works of Émile Durkheim and Jacques Derrida. The findings indicate that QCCA enables systematic comparison of meanings across divergent paradigms while preserving qualitative integrity and avoiding causal reductionism. Overall, QCCA offers a structured and reproducible model for qualitative comparative analysis, while further refinement of fuzzy calibration and validation criteria is recommended.

Abstract The sense of place, as an inherently interdisciplinary and multilayered concept, occupies a central position in understanding human lived experience. This study adopts a qualitative approach and employs comparative analysis to examine the factors that shape the sense of place within the realms of architecture and cinema. By leveraging the analytical capacities of interdisciplinary inquiry, it proposes a comprehensive framework for interpreting this phenomenon. The primary objective of this research is to explicate the common foundations of sense of place within an interdisciplinary approach. This study serves as an example of applying an interdisciplinary approach in the humanities, contributing both to the development of interdisciplinary research methodology and to a deeper understanding of the concept of sense of place. In this regard, three levels, physical, activity-based, and semantic, have been selected as the main dimensions of analysis. The results demonstrate that despite the media differences between architecture and cinema, the mechanisms of sense of place formation in both domains follow a similar pattern and lead to an integrated experience through the interaction of physical, behavioral, and semantic elements. This research emphasizes the synergistic capacity of architecture and cinema in creating meaningful and narrative-oriented spaces, and introduces the interdisciplinary approach as an effective tool for understanding the complexities of place experience in contemporary cultural and social contexts.

Abstract Interdisciplinary studies of ecology and the environment in the Islamic world require a comprehensive and pluralistic approach due to the region’s cultural, geographical, and historical diversity. This article examines the shortcomings and limitations of Orientalist scholarship in this field, identifying the key challenges and opportunities it presents. Drawing on ecological theories, anthropology, historiography, and sociology, the study seeks to develop a deeper understanding of the interactions between Islamic societies and the environment throughout history. The findings demonstrate that many existing studies remain confined to specific geographical and cultural contexts and rely on traditional analytical frameworks that have failed to adequately capture the real complexities of environmental issues in Islamic societies. The article further emphasizes the need to articulate a new ecological perspective that takes into account environmental processes as well as their cultural and social impacts. It argues that interdisciplinary collaboration can foster a more nuanced understanding of pressing environmental challenges and contribute to improved responses. Ultimately, the study highlights the necessity of innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to analyzing environmental issues in the Islamic world and promoting sustainable development across the region. As a point of departure for future debates on environment and ecology, this article aims to contribute to the identification and resolution of environmental problems.