Unfortunately, I had to leave the workshop midway through Day 9, as I had to catch my Eurostar back to London, but I’ve used this day, and I’m sure I will use many more, to reflect upon everything that’s happened.

• Paris was lovely, the CRI is a great institute bringing brilliant people together, the food was lovely, and the conference attendees were genuinely nice people that I hope to maybe see again in the future.
• Though many people were from Bio, Chem, and Physics, which to me are fairly similar disciplines, in comparison to the variety of disciplines I work with, they view each other as very different (and my own discipline was completely off the map [no pun intended]); with that said, they talked about the interdisciplinary understandings they’ve established, and I don’t feel like they largely got mine. This has made me think that there is a “small scale” interdisciplinarity and “large scale” interdisciplinarity. Though Mathematicians and Psychologists may have a wider gap between their disciplines (“large scale” interdisciplinarity), that doesn’t mean a gap doesn’t exist between Biology and Chemistry (“small scale” interdisciplinarity”), even though an intermediate sub-discipline exists (Biochemistry).
• Again, I’m not sure if people really got my discipline (or cared to do so), but I think I was able to reach and interest some. Perhaps we can think of interdisciplinarity in another way – as its own sphere of knowledge and its boundaries are the limits of the interest of the interdisciplinary researcher. An interdisciplinary Biology/Chemistry person may zone out during a talk from an Artist/Psychologist as, though both bits of work are interdisciplinary, it’s not in their area of interest and they don’t see how it can connect with potentials for the them – but it’s not to say one is more important than the other (just different audiences). This, however, may mean missing out on possible new opportunities or connections.
• It was great to see so many people passionate about teaching and their discipline; from that energy, I took away a new found meaning of purpose in my own and what I’m doing. We tend to think about only one academic path – the one where you publish a bunch of papers, pull in research grants, and obtain the hallowed “Professor” title; however, there is another path – where you work with interesting people on interesting projects that may be able to change the world, at least in some small way.