Interdisciplinary research and collaboration are critical in resolving some of the world's most complex problems, like climate change and its impact on human societies. The Human and Earth System Coupled Research (HESCOR) project hosted at the University of Cologne was funded to develop research ideas and establish increased communication between researchers from geophysics/atmospheric sciences, archaeology, geology, education, and environmental humanities to better research the interplay between the human and earth systems from deep time to today. Over two years into the project and the different modes of communication and understanding across these diverse fields has required dedicated efforts to unite researchers across the project – highlighting the complexities of such work.
But what do the public actually know about interdisciplinary research? As part of an outreach initiative to create educational material about interdisciplinary research, we developed comics that whimsically highlight the difficulties of large-scale interdisciplinary projects including methodological differences, a lack of common disciplinary language/jargon, and inter-generational conflicts (as it pertains to academic careers). In addition to our print versions, we also created digital interactive comics to delve deeper into the key concepts and research from workers of the HESCOR project. This poster will showcase our interactive comics and provide an opportunity to discuss some of the ways that researchers can communicate the "underbelly" of interdisciplinary research to students and the public.