Vision and Objectives

Established in 2020, in the midst of the raging COVID - 19 pandemic, Centre for Transdisciplinary Studies at the Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Agra is formed with the broad objectives of promoting the idea and culture of inter- and trans-disciplinary studies in the University. Traditionally, the academic structure of the University is divided into rather tightly demarcated departments, which hardly talk to each other, let alone collaborate academically with each other. However, the latest research in various fields have shown that transcending disciplinary boundaries is no longer an option – in order to carry out meaningful and impactful research with an aim to solve a real-world problem, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity has become an absolute necessity. It has never been more so apparent than in the times the centre came into existence - in the middle of a crippling pandemic. The pandemic has shown that a huge number of researchers from different areas of expertise - epidemiologists, virologists, doctors, biologists, social scientists, statisticians, computer scientists linguists and computational linguists and a whole range of experts from various other fields - have contributed in handling, controlling and bringing the pandemic under control efficiently and effectively. Without the collaboration of all these experts from all these different fields of study and expertise, it would have been plainly impossible to handle and deal with the pandemic in an efficient and effective way that it is currently being dealt with in most parts of the globe.

But, of course, the power of transdicsiplinary studies have been known to academia since long and not a by-product of the pandemic. The idea of this centre is to develop a platform where multiple disciplines could come together seamlessly and work together as one unit towards solving a common problem. The centre will allow different departments to come together and propose programs of study that require expertise from different disciplines without the need of interfering with the traditional roles that individual departments play and the way they function. Thus it will serve as a meeting ground outside of the traditional and formal setup of 'disciplines' in the University.

The centre will allow for any program of study and research that would require 2 or more departments from the University to collaborate, ideally but not necessarily, in equal proportion (in terms of distribution of workload, courses and learning objectives of the students) and by doing so strives to solve some of the most vexing problem facing the humankind today.