Andreas Roepstorff from the Interacting Minds Centre is well-known for his ability to assemble researchers in projects where cross-disciplinary working facilitates new research questions. Andreas Roepstorff was recently awarded an ordinary, but somewhat atypical, professorship – divided between the Department of Clinical Medicine and the School of Culture and Society.

2017.02.10 | Nanna Jespersgård

Andreas Roepstorff was recently awarded an ordinary, but somewhat atypical, professorship – divided between the Department of Clinical Medicine and the School of Culture and Society. Photo: Lars Pallesen.

Something unexpected happens – but in a good way – when researchers get together to explore a field that crosses the traditional boundaries for what constitutes medicine, natural science, the humanities or social science. Unfortunately, it is easier said than done in practice, but there is a solution if you ask professor of brain and cognition research, Andreas Roepstorff. He leads the Interacting Minds Centre, which creates new knowledge about how humans interact with one another.

As centre director, Andreas Roepstorff has been involved in numerous collaborations, in which researchers with different academic competences have succeeded in getting their research to fuse together. He explains that when they succeed in doing this, it is as a rule because the researchers work in unison to 'own' the project. Unlike the many collaborations where a researcher might well make use of an external colleague as a sparring partner, but where there is no integration of subject areas in a way that opens up for additional inquisitive questions:

"My experience is that it is the shared projects which allow disciplinary differences to fade into the background. As soon as you have one project together, you begin to ask questions in a new way, which is what gives it life and opens up for opportunities," says Andreas Roepstorff.

Both biologist and anthropologist 

He moves easily between natural science and the humanities. Helped along by a double Master's degree with a MSc in biology and a MA in anthropology – and perhaps also supported by the recognition inherent in the fact that the Department of Clinical Medicine recently teamed up with the School of Culture and Society at Arts to create an ordinary professorship?

"At first I thought it was unimportant whether I was professor with special responsibilities (MSO) or had an ordinary professorship, because the work is the same. But when the contract arrived, I realised that the formalisation contains a recognition of the fact that the whole field is important. We have a unique platform for cross-disciplinary research that is scarcely found anywhere else in the world. It has affected me more than I had imagined it would," says Andreas Roepstorff.

Exercising your curiosity

As an example of the interdisciplinary approach, Andreas Roepstorff mentions a project that began with the desire to promote social cognition in patients with schizophrenia. The initiative arose in psychiatry with Clinical Psychologist Vibeke Bliksted, but in collaboration with the centre's linguists and their insight into semiotics and theories about how human beings decode each other’s tone of voice and facial expressions, the project became in Andreas Roepstorff's words 'characterised by motion and new balls being sent back and forth'. Do schizophrenics understand sarcasm? If they do not, are they able to learn it and manage better in life? Are there other things at stake in relation to social cognition, such as genetic markers?

"Since the work started, Vibeke Bliksted has helped to draw up new guidelines for various types of training for schizophrenic patients, which is in itself a victory. But what happened along the way helped to open up the entire field of knowledge. Suddenly we sat there with questions like: 'What is social cognition really?' and 'What does it mean to be in a body'," explains Andreas Roepstorff about the special aspect of bringing together experts who, at first glance, do not seem like a logical match.

Finding strength in an interface

For as long as he can remember, Andreas Roepstorff has been preoccupied by the fact that different disciplines naturally enrich each other. He learned this in his childhood home, where his father was a protein chemist and his mother a sociologist, and he has experienced it personally. Also in difficult ways, when he himself was a student and felt doubly marginalised with one foot planted in the natural sciences and the other in the humanities.

"The experience of being 'a soft student' in the natural sciences while studying biology, and on the other hand 'a hard student' at humanistic anthropology, has forced me to find and recognise my own standpoint in this interface. Fortunately, ever since I graduated with my double Master’s, I have been drawn into research projects where my dual academic background comes into play," says Andreas Roepstorff.

The question of what type of interdisciplinary research the Interacting Minds Centre will carry out in the future will be answered by the researchers who contact and what they are engaged in. Andreas Roepstorff is himself preoccupied by a project on obesity, which is currently at the planning stage. Obesity and overweight is a research area in which the natural scientific approach with knowledge of diets, metabolism and exercise only corresponds to a limited extent with the field’s 'soft' research areas, which e.g. tackle social inequality or personal uncertainty as possible causes of obesity.

"Maybe part of the answer to society's obesity issues can be found if you bring the soft and hard areas together with a view towards initiating transdisciplinary research. There is plenty of evidence in both camps, but they are not talking to each other," says Andreas Roepstorff.

About the Interacting Minds Centre

• The Interacting Minds Centre provides a transdisciplinary platform to study human interaction. See more at http://interactingminds.au.dk 
• Approximately 40 researchers are affiliated with the centre. They have different academic backgrounds and a common desire to break down traditional disciplinary boundaries by collaborating across research disciplines.
• In January 2017, Centre Director Andreas Roepstorff was appointed to a professorship at the Department of Clinical Medicine, Health, and the School of Culture and Society, Arts.
   

Contact

Professor Andreas Roepstorff Telephone: (+45) 8716 2124 Mobile: (+45) 2636 2772 Email: etnoroep@hum.au.dk Professor Andreas Roepstorff
Telephone: (+45) 8716 2124
Mobile: (+45) 2636 2772
Email: etnoroep@hum.au.dk