The vast majority of PhD projects would be improved by having more supervisors with different competences, according to Professor Thomas Vorup-Jensen, who is programme director for the PhD degree programme at Biomedicine.

2021.08.12 | Line Rønn

When professor Thomas Vorup-Jensen is supervising PhD students, there is often an extra supervisor present who comes from clinical practice at Aarhus University Hospital.

He believes that the bringing together of disciplines at the supervisor meeting gives the project a decisive boost.

"Let’s say you’re conducting research into the significance of protein structures – then it’ll be good to have a molecular craftsman along from Biomedicine. But it’s also good to have a supervisor the students can consult when they’re searching for the clinical meaning of the work they’re doing," says Thomas Vorup-Jensen, who is programme director for the PhD degree programme at Biomedicine and handles the scientific and administrative aspects of the PhD programme at the department.

Although he does not have the statistics to hand, he has noted a slight increase in the number of PhD projects with supervisors from other environments at the faculty. But he still thinks that bringing the interdisciplinary aspect into the PhD level is going too slowly.

He encourages his colleagues to give the students – and one another – a little nudge so that there is increased focus on the benefits of bringing several disciplines into a PhD project.

Thomas Vorup-Jensen has long been a staunch supporter of the necessity of interdisciplinarity, which is much more than one of the most worn out buzzwords of the past decade – in his opinion it is an important and necessary part of the faculty's DNA.

"The more opportunities the technology provides, the harder it will be for a researcher to stay updated, and the more specialists you’ll need to realise the potential of a project. It’s quite common at Health to 'borrow' a technique or knowledge from colleagues with a different background. It would be good if this spirit rubbed off on the PhD projects more," he says.

More of a hassle

Interdisciplinary research is beneficial in the natural sciences, but according to Thomas Vorup-Jensen, it is a necessity in the health sciences.

Nevertheless, he understands why some students reject the idea of combining different supervisors' competences when planning a PhD project.

"Everything is not automatically good just because you shuffle the cards. The barrier is the increased complexity and the cultural differences that can arise when you’re trying to get a project to function. You have to be able to figure out how the team fits together academically and personally," he says, and acknowledges that it is also both administratively and logistically more troublesome to have several supervisors connected to a project.

"To begin with it may feel as if it's good to have a strong supervisor who has control and an overview of the project, especially because the PhD degree programme is compact and doesn’t provide many opportunities for getting side-tracked. But my experience is that the scientific product is more durable when different angles are factored in," he says.

"Of course, in your application you need to outline how you will manage the group. The three to four supervisors you could end up with if everything falls into place must also supplement each other academically. But I think that the reciprocal and equal discussions between several supervisors from different areas make PhD projects better and more international. When you involve specialists from different disciplines at an early stage of a project, you get a broader and more future-proofed contribution to the fundamental hypotheses," he says.

Also benefits the supervisor

A recent group meeting at the Department of Biomedicine was attended by people with very different backgrounds. A postdoc removed the intestines from a mouse, which led to an interesting discussion about the intestinal anatomy of humans and animals – which was itself a path to new knowledge for Thomas Vorup-Jensen, whose main subject is chemistry.

"As a supervisor, it's also an advantage if you're not alone, because you get new academic input and personal relations. Here at Health we have very different degree programmes, and Biomedicine in particular has a very special environment, because we are at the intersection between a lot of equal collaborations. Each of us has our own insight that we need to be able to synthesise, and that is the core of interdisciplinary research," he says.

According to Thomas Vorup-Jensen, the ability to collaborate is one of Aarhus University's greatest strengths. 

“This is where Aarhus is special. I’ve worked in the US, where I found that many research groups are more closed off and focused on themselves. The consequence is that things can be academically narrow," says the professor, who believes that some of the benefits of research abroad can also be found within the country's borders.

"The PhD students need to go abroad and do research, but we should have the same focus on collaboration with local and national colleagues," he says.

Ideas often grow best in collaboration

All students who are enrolled in the PhD school at Health must choose a main supervisor and at least one co-supervisor.

But as someone who surveys the PhD landscape, Thomas Vorup-Jensen cannot help but puzzle over the fact that a number of students only choose supervisors from one environment when there are, especially at Health, good opportunities to put together a team of supplementary disciplines.

"Originality comes from individuals, but ideas often grow best in collaboration with other people, and we have a team mentality at Health that we need to safeguard. The students are good at finding each other in different fields, and we also have a responsibility to teach them that throughout their careers, they need to be able to establish sensible, meaningful collaborations," he says.

In fact, this can be summed up very concisely, according to Thomas Vorup-Jensen:

"Interdisciplinarity is necessary for solving the big challenges facing society, and we can no longer get by with the monodisciplinary understanding of anything."