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Updated on: 20/10/2025
Exploring new areas of research, responding to the complex questions of modern societies, providing solutions to future challenges, and supporting transitions requires the adoption of an interdisciplinary approach.
Interdisciplinarity has been at the heart of the academic ethos of the University of Bordeaux since its creation in 2014. Over the years, it has supported a coherent set of fundamentally interdisciplinary initiatives and projects, in research, in education, in innovation, both internally or as part of the Future Investment Programme: the Laboratories of Excellence (LabEx), the “Arts and Sciences” programme, project calls for interdisciplinary doctoral research, cross-disciplinary thematic schemes, initial support exploration projects, Major Research Programmes (GPRs, Grands programmes de recherche), Research Impulse Networks (RRIs, Réseaux de recherche impulsion), graduate programmes (UBGRADs), Science with and for Society certification (SAPS, Science avec et pour la société), the European ENLIGHT alliance, and several institutional projects: ACT, InnovationS, PUI@Bordeaux, NewDEAL, etc.
Recently, new initiatives have been launched to reinforce this ambition: a call for exploratory Interdisciplinary Research Projects, dedicated funding for research departments, the FORESITE project — a programme for the development of cross-functional mechanisms that go beyond the framework of individual disciplines. A focus group made up of a dozen lecturer-researchers and researchers in different disciplines, both at the beginning and the middle of their careers, has been set up: a number of working seminars have led to proposals for measures tailored to expectations.
In line with this dynamic, the University of Bordeaux has decided to adopt a truly cross-functional approach promoting interdisciplinarity in cooperation with its partners, both at the local and international level. Serving research, education, and innovation, interdisciplinarity thus contributes to strengthening the University of Bordeaux as a major research university which is both a regional leader and attractive internationally.
Strategic coordination work aims to improve the whole range of mechanisms by enhancing their coherence and visibility, both for the purposes of research, education, and innovation.
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Stimulating and supporting interdisciplinary research projects requires support at every level of the academic process, starting from the initial ideas and premises of collaboration. For this reason, the University of Bordeaux has adopted flexible and personal support tools for on-site staff.
Three levels of support are available to researchers:
Maximum amount: €1000
Object: one-off expenditure by an individual researcher (not including the organisation of academic events)
Eligibility guidelines for expenditure: Small operating expenses, assignments, bringing in a colleague, paying for a service, or remunerating a speaker for methodological training etc.
Maximum amount: €3000 (event) to €4000 (internship)
Object: organising an academic event or funding an intern
Eligibility guidelines for expenditure: Expenses related to organising an academic event involving the participation of several researchers representing at least two different ERC panels. Remuneration of an intern: only possible for departments under university supervision.
Maximum amount: €4000
Object: Short-term entry fellowships: short visit of a researcher from a foreign institution at the request of a researcher from Bordeaux. or Short-term exit fellowships: short stay in a foreign institution, participation in a residency or project abroad outside one’s discipline (which would therefore not be covered by the department), with an aim of acculturation, meeting colleagues etc.
Eligibility guidelines for expenditure: Fellowships lasting fewer than 21 days. Visit without teaching responsibilities and without HR procedures. Fellowship for research work with a community or discipline different from that of the applicant (cf. ERC panels) to help to establish a partnership or pursue interdisciplinary collaboration, to initiate research, to develop a project, to co-write a specific application, for a publication or other deliverable.
Form to apply (in French)
Last update: 24/02/2025
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RIE projects, which last 24 months, are small consortia of 2 to 4 researchers and their teams, whose aim is to answer a highly specific research question. They are therefore different from the more generalist Major Research Programmes (GFRs), which focus on a given theme, involving a larger number of academics.
The third call for proposals is currently underway. The deadline for submissions is 4 April 2025 (all information and the call for proposals are on line on the university intranet).
The College of Doctoral Schools has supported interdisciplinarity by allocating, since 2018, from five to seven doctoral contracts to interdisciplinary thesis projects as part of a call for specific projects. Thesis subjects must be jointly supervised by two thesis supervisors attached to two different doctoral schools or two distinct research departments.
After six years of operation, during which it has supported around forty projects, the programme has evolved to align itself with the call for RIE projects launched in 2023. The College of Doctoral Schools is now allocating its quota of interdisciplinary doctoral contracts to support successful applicants for the RIE call who, after embarking on their project, reach the conclusion that it could be the subject of a thesis.
This fund aims to create opportunities for dialogue and meetings between the University of Bordeaux’s eleven research departments: its purpose is to finance academic events (symposiums, study days, etc.).
A fundraising campaign is organised each year through the research departments.
As part of the FORESITE initiative, the University of Bordeaux aims to establish a joint interdisciplinarity monitoring body with the purpose of measuring, overseeing, and evaluating interdisciplinarity across the site.
The monitoring body will be launched in the coming months.
In conjunction with the personalisation of student courses, the University of Bordeaux is developing the cross-functionality and interdisciplinarity of its educational offering. This development involves a range of cross-functional education mechanisms, ranging from teaching units targeting cross-functional skills in an interdisciplinary approach to programmes entirely organised around interdisciplinarity and cross-functionality.
The cross-functional education programme is thus conceived as a mechanism designed to promote the acquisition of interdisciplinary skills within each student’s individual course of study, regardless of their level of education or academic discipline and regardless of their objectives (opening up to multidisciplinarity; promoting awareness of environmental and societal issues; encouraging personal development).
The Multidisciplinary Higher Education Course (CPES, Cycle pluridisciplinaire d’enseignement supérieur - a cross functional multidisciplinary course covering academic and scientific scholarship and society), the Teacher Training Programme (FaME, Formation aux métiers de l’enseignement), and the Humanist and Academic Culture course (CHS, Culture humaniste et scientifique - a humanities programme co-accredited with Bordeaux Montaigne University) represent specific examples, among many others, such as the environmental and social transitions unit integrated into all undergraduate education courses, or the entrepreneurship module, of the success of interdisciplinary education at the University of Bordeaux.
