Knowing Ourselves: Building an Interactive Researcher Map at the University of Alberta Luciano Frizzera, 1 Morgan Cselinacz, 2 Mihaela Ilovan, 2 Astrid Ensslin, 2 and Geoffrey Rockwell. 2 1. Concordia University 2. University of Alberta Introduction Almost all academic journals, in their mission statements, now claim to be ‘interdisciplinary’; so do many academic departments (particularly English departments) and even entire universities. (Moran 2010, loc. 114) Despite claims to interdisciplinarity, universities typically organize knowledge along disciplinary lines in departments and faculties. Inevitably, researchers and projects are constrained by such organizational structures which leads institutions to form interdisciplinary units that can accommodate alternative research configurations and initiatives that cross departments and faculties. Institutes like the Kule Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS) at the University of Alberta (UofA) have been set up to encourage 1 the development of interdisciplinary research projects, but what do we really know about the research of our colleagues and the connections among them other than their departmental affiliation? How is an institute or interdisciplinary group to know what research directions are pursued by its constituency? For that matter, how is a university to know itself? Knowledge is the mission of universities, and yet most universities are so large and heterogeneous that they struggle to know their own research community. Given how many researchers there are at any university, and how independent they are, it is difficult to manage information about research activities, even though universities need current information to assess and promote programs, teaching and research. Knowledge about the interdisciplinary areas of research strength that cross departmental boundaries is even harder to find. What knowledge there is gets hoarded by units like departments that have to assess annual performance. This paper describes the development of a research network map of the interests of the humanists, social scientists, and artists at the UofA (cloud.tapor.ca/viz/phil/), which is part of KIAS’ project to understand where there were interdisciplinary strengths at the university and to help connect researchers. In this kias.ualberta.ca 1 1