Interdisciplinary Themes - Contributing to Major Global Challenges

Interdisciplinary Themes  
Interdisciplinary Themes

The following is an extract from the Strategic Plan 2011-2015 document. For more updated information on the development of inter-disciplinary research themes, please visit our research themes pages.

Strategic objective

As well as encouraging blue sky investigator-led research, we aim to use our broad disciplinary base to focus on a small number of multidisciplinary themes in which Aberdeen is, or has the potential to be, a world leader or global partner of choice, and which fit with our institutional values and characteristics.

Our research agenda must contribute to addressing major global challenges, which requires teams which cross disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. At Aberdeen our range of expertise offers exciting opportunities to ensure that we contribute significantly in a number of key areas. We have identified four themes which build on the uniqueness of our expertise, history and location. In taking forward these themes we will ensure that they impact both on our research and our teaching. We will also invest in emerging research themes that fit with our priorities.

Environmental sustainability

Until the advent of oil, the University of Aberdeen sat at the centre of a region whose economy was predominantly and deeply rooted in farming and fishing. As a result we have developed unique, in some cases world-leading, strengths in environmental, rural and marine research. Bringing together research groups from both the natural and social sciences provides us with a singular perspective on this most pressing issue of our times.

Energy

Located in the Energy Capital of Europe, we have developed an unparalleled understanding of the needs of the energy industries over the last forty years. In all aspects of oil and gas exploration and production, from the technological to the human, the legal to the environmental, we are established leaders. We will also seek to expand our expertise to renewable energy sources.

Pathways to a healthy life

With our established strengths in both basic and translational medicine, and building on our merger with the Rowett Research Institute, we will seek to enhance our contribution to all aspects of preventive and curative health. The rationale of this theme – to achieve fuller understanding of the life cycle and to attempt to improve not only life expectancy but also life expectancy free of disease – has universal resonance. The overall strategy is based around integrating basic and applied research to generate improved health and patient care. There is increasing recognition of the important contribution prevention strategies can make to public health and to minimising health inequalities.

The North

Today the circumpolar North is regarded as an observatory for changing relations between human societies and their environments. Aberdeen is the principal centre for northern research in the UK by way of disciplines including anthropology, archaeology, geography, literature, music and history, and our collections contain a wealth of items of northern significance. We will seek to work with other centres across the northern world to enhance global understanding and policy for this fragile and sensitive region of the world.

We aim to:

  • position Aberdeen as a research leader in our chosen themes
  • find new ways to support interdisciplinary research
  • create new undergraduate and postgraduate programmes of study and research
  • build staff networks that support each theme
  • identify emerging research themes and implement strategies to support these

Case Studies

Leading the science for sustainable environments

Decisions made by United Nations organisations, international and national agencies and governments on issues relating to climate change, desertification, biodiversity and water management are being increasingly influenced by the work of scientists at Aberdeen Centre for Environmental Sustainability (ACES). Conceived to bring together the best researchers working on environmental sustainability across the University of Aberdeen and the James Hutton (previously Macaulay) Institute to drive forward new, high-impact, interdisciplinary environmental research collaborations, this critical mass of world-leading researchers has ambitious plans to ensure that their research really does change the world.

Digital revolution for rural communities

Fewer deaths on rural roads, better healthcare and transport, thriving local enterprise, and healthy ecosystem. All are aims of dot.rural, our research hub investigating the transforming potential of digital technologies on rural communities. This £11.8 million grant from the Research Councils UK's (RCUK) Digital Economy Programme draws together research areas across the University including computing science, transport, healthcare and sociology, to work with rural communities and partner organisations to explore how advances in digital technologies can transform the lives of people living in vulnerable rural communities across the UK.

Food, health, sustainability - and Scotland's economy

Food security is a key global challenge. It demands research into how to provide food for an escalating population, while using scarce resources in a sustainable way. It also requires the food we produce is of the highest nutritional value, safe, and healthy. Closer to home, the food and drink industry is a major player in the Scottish and UK economies and vitally important to national sustainable economic growth. The University has a major strategic opportunity in these areas through its research and policy-influencing expertise in nutrition at the Rowett Institute of Nutrition and Health as well as in fish biology, crop and soil science in the Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences. Together with the location of the new Scottish Food and Health Innovation Service at the University this will make Aberdeen the undisputed hub for research in food, diet and health for the food industry in Scotland.