 So thanks very much to our four panelists. They've really offered a rich and thought-provoking set of remarks and I have a lot of questions but I'm sure you do too. And so we don't have a huge amount of time. We have about 15 minutes and we can at least start a discussion and maybe continue over lunch. But I'll let me turn it over now to the audience and collect a few questions and please a question, not a monologue, not a comment, and please start by introducing yourself. Is anybody please? Yes, in the front. My name is Darryl Sequera and I'm an environmental ecologist based in Finland. I think this is a very important part of the meeting with Weyder and my proposal is that one way to get around this problem is to create a framework which shall be observed when dealing with planning of projects etc. Now I've noticed that in this situation here there are no environmentalists per se, like ecologists for example. There are politicians, sociologists and so on which are related perhaps but no real environmentalists. But the fact is that over a period of these more than 30 years actually there has been the the intention and the success of bringing in for example environmental impact assessment into projects in its planning stage and evaluation stage and implementation stage as well. And it has been fairly successful. I myself have been involved in bringing about this kind of change in the thinking, in the development agencies and to a small extent even in Weyder in the past. The current management of Weyder don't seem to be so interested in environments. They seem to adopt the attitude that natural resources are infinite and we can just grab it where we like and dispose of it. But maybe I'm exaggerating just to create some polarization shall we say. That's one question. The other aspect is that we should prevent abuse of this multi-disciplinarity. Okay. Whereby I have been for example when I worked in China there was a political scientist. I don't know how good she was really as in her subject but she was put on committees where she made decisions concerning biodiversity conservation which were very ecological in nature. Those kind of decisions. Not political at all but they were more kind of biological type you know. Then I once did a consultancy for the World Bank and they told me to look for rare species of bird in the jungle in the middle of Tanzania in about two days. Now because who was telling you to do that and he called economist. Yeah. I'm sorry. We should avoid abuse you know of the opposition of people in these kind of committees whereby they try and pronounce on things they don't know much about and that also reflects on what economists pronounce upon. They very often make blunders when it comes to the real problems of implementing economic policies in the society and in the environment you know and I won't elaborate on that but I could. Okay thanks. I think that gives our panelists a lot to comment on. Let me catch a couple more questions and then I'll turn back to our panelists to respond. Yes in the middle with the red scarf. Well thank you very much. I'm Sarah Kourni from the University of Sussex Brighton. Thank you for the thoughts you have shared this morning. But a few questions come to mind particularly for an early career researcher like me. I am very much conscious of the criteria by which my career progression is determined and a lot of it is based on being able to publish in journals that are recognized by economists as you know high ranking. How would one marry this with conducting multidisciplinary work if you know these are not based purely on economic methods and therefore one might not be able to gain access or be able to have one's article published in some of these journals that are recognized by the profession. Thank you. Thanks. There was a question in the front here. The woman with the yeah. Thank you. Vivian Stolen from Finland. Way back I was an assistant in labor law and economic relations at the University of Turku. So I am a lawyer and I was very very pleased with with all this what you have been telling about working life because I think that's extremely important. When I was combining then labor law and economic relations I realized that there was no connection whatsoever at the legal level between these and of course the two sides of the same coin. And after that I have been struggling also with the mental barriers that are created by by our legal doctrines. So now I am researching work that is done between an employment and business. And the problem is with labor law and the legal or supportive structures. They only cover work that is done in an employment relationship. So that captures the notion of law and what is done outside is mostly invisible. And now I am an independent researcher. So my work is also in that respect invisible. But I have been focusing on on the work of artists because that's a profession that you have been training for years in order to to perform the work and you have to struggle like hell in order to be able to do it. So that means that the social structures are not are not catered for artistic work. And at the same time this is an economic field that is growing and is flowering where industry and so on goes down. And then also the work that is done in household and in civil society. So I have been very very pleased also with the work that Stiglitz have been doing on on civil society and households. So I would like to just bring these questions also to your research agenda. Okay thanks. Yes here behind you. Thank you. David Stifle Lafayette College in the United States. I'd like the panelist to just comment if you will on on the kind of the difference difference that I distinguish between multidisciplinary work and interdisciplinary work. You know in our college for example in a lot of undergraduate institutions in the States there's a lot more programming majors in interdisciplinary work. And the our tendency is to get your PhD in a particular discipline though there are some interdisciplinary graduate programs. Some of these masters of development practice type programs that are emerging these days. But perhaps it kind of what Danielle was talking about with the different the depth versus the breadth challenge. I'm just curious on your thoughts about this breaking down the barriers if indeed we don't have our silos so much at that PhD level what are we giving up if you will and is that the way we should go. Thanks. Great. We have time for one more quick question. Okay the gentleman in the back. I'm not sure I'm a gentleman. Thanks very much. I enjoyed the reflection very much. I'm wondering about the the attention to to language and concepts which merges out of the out of out of your your experiences and and and how do I think your your your story about how you your your interest or your concern moves from from the strength of unions or labor market rigidities to legislative frameworks to the embedded of the judiciary embeddedness of the judiciary in in a particular context is extremely interesting because we see that not only the concepts are changing but also the problem is changing and it's becoming and it's becoming very in and in a way it seems to me that you you you you you abandon the your your initial framework completely and and you have to adapt to a completely new way of thinking about the situation and and I think that that's what that is the real value of of of multi-disciplinarity is that you find new questions starting to emerge in the in the interaction of people of different epistemic communities if you like that there's there's a completely it's not nobody is studying what they initially thought that they would study and I was just wondering it's not really a question but since you asked for questions that could you have other examples of of new questions which emerged out of these out of these kinds of collude collaborations or collisions thank you great my name is Jeremy Gould I at the University of US good thank you so we have five questions slash comments for the panelists to respond to please feel free to respond to whichever you want to and maybe we we go in order of presentation and we've we have lunch it's lunchtime now so if I ask you to speak for a couple minutes each so we don't keep people from lunch okay okay so because of the time limit I'll just run through a few of the questions I mean some of them were very clearly linked to comment say Daniel or Michael made wrapping them together I think on career progression and maybe David's interverses multidisciplinary approach I mean typically I've just driven drawn a graph right of what would happen over over once career and I think purely for personal utility functions or the way the the industry is structured or the way you're looking at career progression early on it makes sense to specialize and publish in those journals where the returns are going to ensure that you get tenure what I mean and that's I think a really difficult thing to argue against I think you'll find and it's probably true of of people we know Gary Fields Ravi Kanpur others that at least I know who've who over time once they've established their reputation started to stretch their wings and maybe to extend your metaphor remain Hindus but Hindus who take communion right so it's that sort of so you're willing to you're willing to to live in other worlds but I think and perhaps it's it's my own sort of personal preferences to remain rooted in in your original discipline I just think because that's where you can add value that's where your comparative advantage may lie and just a just another point about you know there is on the law in economics work there is a huge amount as you know of work that's going on within the ILO but I think less successfully that's drawn economists in I think it is a really really difficult bridge that and even in competition law and economics but I think there is interesting work I think in the developing world you do find straddling between you know when a merger case is taken to court by the by the law fraternity there's an economist next to them right that that tries to be helpful so I think in in many cases maybe there is a selection bias but but I think in many I think you have fundamentalist Hindus and fundamentalist Catholics right and and the hope is that we can all together find a space where where those that are willing to be diverse can can believe in reincarnation but also take communion I'm very confused not really I would like it kind of follows on thank you Rachel was from from what Haroon sang and pick up on something wasn't a response to direct question but very strongly feeling partly as a result of your question this we can talk about multi-disciplinarity or practice interdisciplinarity and whatnot but as the scholars themselves or the principal investigators and get more senior they're less likely to go out into the field and either your own students or the field workers who are employed don't yet have either the the students are still doing their graduate work they're going to be properly committed to their discipline in a more narrow frame and then a contracted in field workers in the field aren't going to really know possibly what you're talking about when you say when you're trying to supervise and manage and say this is what this question means and I've been very interested in South African rural work on the income dynamic study about an extremely sophisticated Zulu speaking research team that I had none of whom had first degrees but all had a lot of experiences field workers and spotted things that I could never have spotted and I'm not just talking about in a language way but also started interpreting things according to own cultural norms and I use that word with great reservation but started picked up much more on the depth to which superstition controls a lot of theories of explanation in some of those rural communities I'm being very careful in the way I say it now but also themselves were interpreting at the said according to some what I would call superstition so a person we went into a household and there was a hydrocephalic child in there and we got back to debrief at the end of the day and that child had been bewitched and I was trying to say well no there is a single time to carefully you you operating in any way I think this is the point sorry that in interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary work you're working anyway with your own precepts and your own languages and your own anger and your own sense of being disparaged and and whatnot but now to take that two or three steps down the research track chain and to try and deal with those different interpretations of the world I think is very hard to do very hard to do thank you thank you okay well thanks for your comments and observations I think you know this this issue as Sarah brought up about the publications I mean something I was was trying to articulate with this kind of idea of having a two prong strategy and I think I mean we often do it I often have to write donor reports and then you have to think about how can I spin this to then get a journal article out of it I mean we we're often doing it kind of within our disciplines but I think I mean one of the things I've found as most useful is finding a partner in crime from another field who's really interested in a similar topic as you but brings you know maybe brings the different method or the different theory so I've been working a lot on political economy of agricultural subsidies and working with with an ag economist who's methodologically much much sharper than I am but I can contribute the kind of theoretical background and the framing of the question so I think yet finding you know within your kind of thematic interests finding kind of a partner in crime and I think on the kind of interdisciplinary programs I mean I think what you sacrifice is the methods at the end of the day because you know I think as anthropologists you learn how to do kind of great ethnographic work and of course you know you learn your kind of econometrics or your general equilibrium modeling in your economics program and kind of really good comparative case study work as political scientists and so I think that is something you sacrifice and I'm saying this is someone who did I did my master's work in development studies and thought I theoretically got a good feel for a lot of different issues but at the end of the day kind of had a weak methods toolkit and I think as long as the the kind of job market remains kind of siloed you know they look for kind of an urban specialist or you know a public administration specialist or you know economists what not I think as long as that remains siloed it's quite difficult to to get kind of students kind of excited and kind of interdisciplinary work and make them feel like they're they're equipped adequately and I guess lastly on Jeremy's question about new observations from collaboration just one thing that struck me from our African youth work was that there's kind of a lot of stuff in the kind of public public policy community and African Development Bank World Bank as well about pushing towards kind of vocational education and you know that that curriculums in Africa are outdated and they're focused on the wrong issues and not equipping people for the skills market when we brought in an education specialist who was from Kenya he did this amazing kind of historical overview of vocational education showing this has been going on for a long time and the impacts even in even in Europe of vocational education really really haven't been been very impressive so kind of changed my own thinking in terms of policy prescriptions on African youth when I finished my PhD I had the choice of being the token development guy in a sociology department or being the token sociologist in a development department and so the choice was for me I guess came down to what epistemic community do I want to join who are my people I decided I cared about development way more than I cared about sociology sociology was a means to an end I suffered the indignities of a PhD not because I wanted to hang out with other sociologists because I actually wanted to try and do this idealistic thing of change the world and that choice then meant that I did by choosing to put myself into as the Hindu amongst the Catholics I said I'm gonna I'm gonna wager I'm gonna back that I can I will learn so much more by hanging out with not just without economists but by with operational people in the bank like getting a real phenomenological real-time sense of what big projects big politics ugly politics looks likes and feels like when you're part of it as opposed to sniping about it from the sidelines I said I'm gonna wager that I will do better sociology actually if I'm willing to deal with the craziness and the uncertainty of that then if I just hole up in a nice leafy college somewhere and think about all this stuff that was my choice right and reasonable people can choose entirely differently about how they choose to go forward and I am as a white guy from Australia trying to cut it international development and even being to a developing country when I decided I wanted to do this sort of stuff I am the learning curve that I was self consciously so far behind on meant that I had to I was just I think I am I will not be taken credibly and certain taken seriously in this field when I have credibility to function unless I'm willing to do all the things that one needs to do to actually get a better handle on this field so all of which is to say I think if in your early part of your career you're gonna really have a pretty honest inventory of sort of what you're what sort of trajectory you want to be on if you want to if you're if your people if you get your rush out of hanging out the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association those are your tribe that's the people you bond with and you like hanging out with then you do what you got to do to be respected by that little tribe as it happens I've gone on to win the best article and best book prize in the American Sociological Association for work that I did in development but can never have done that if I hadn't been sitting where I sit surrounded by the super smart wonderful economists who remind me on an hourly basis what I don't know and who and even more so we're hanging out with operational people who run real projects in real countries with real governments with real problems and real budget constraints who again just know vastly more than I ever will about how to actually turn these ideas into things that can be funded that can be politically supported and you know so I think a lot of it really comes down to who are your people who are you trying to who do you want to be respected by and who do you think you can actually make a contribution to and then ultimately whether it's in an academic setting or not you've just got a wager in effect to that the contribution that you have and that you've trained your life for when it's added into the mix and combined with that of other people that something good will happen but I think pragmatically in my in my my slice of experience of all this if you you get animated by important problem and you'll get you know wager that you'll get recognized by the profession and by practitioners as well when you actually make inroads onto a problem that the world cares about and ever refined tweaking of models is there's a niche niche niche part of the of the epistemic community it'll reward you for that but I think to justify these nice conferences to to justify nice salaries from the World Bank you ultimately the only real justification for me is that we have a religious conviction that knowledge somehow really does matter and that it can contribute to slight improvements in the quality of our thinking and our doing and our assessing in development and to do that well you've got to just be willing to recognize that we are we have the luxury of having the career we do because of the because of the institutional framings that allow us to have these kind of conferences and so to me ethically starting from a really key problem and then figuring out how to bolt your skills onto the skills of other people take division of labor seriously that's how good stuff happens in the world thanks so this is fun and I have the hard task of cutting off the conversation maybe you can continue over lunch I'm sure you have a lot more to the the panelists have provided a lot of food for thought and I really thank them for their their remarks it's been really interesting for me thank you