Governing interdisciplinary cooperation in Centers of Excellence

In the past years Centers of Excellence (CoE) has risen to prominence as a funding instrument in science. The idea is that by focusing resources, people and attention within a center environment, and over a substantial time span, excellence in science can be promoted. Similarly, interdisciplinarity is often seen as an enabling condition or even necessary for frontier research. This article builds on a qualitative interview study with Swedish Centers of Excellence (CoE) directors, and asks the question: - how is interdisciplinarity governed and developed within a CoE environment, and what is its effects in terms of research processes and organization. The study presents a detailed account of a number of aspects of interdisciplinary governance, conditions and outcomes, and describes how these relate via specific mechanisms. Together the results illuminate how CoE governance creates pathways to interdisciplinarity, that allow collaboration to go beyond mere interaction, and towards integration of specialisms.