Governing obesities – interdisciplinary obesity research in practice

Background: Obesity is a complex problem demanding complex solutions.This proposal stands at the centre of the large interdisciplinary research consortia “Governing Obesity” at the University of Copenhagen. Researchersfrom different parts of biomedicine, the social sciences and the humanitiesseek to develop novel means and methods to treat and prevent obesity andits consequences.The expectation is that these interdisciplinary collaborations will lead to effective interventions at the societal and individual level.A part of our involvement in this initiative has been to investigate how interdisciplinary obesity research is done in practice and how scientific claimsand translational aspirations are interpretated and negotiated across disciplines. Method: Through ethnographic fieldwork including focus groupsand interviews, it is explored how obesity as a research object is operationalised in interdisciplinary research collaboration.Results: Interdisciplinary collaboration does not necessarily work upon acommon perception of what obesity is, epistemological openness or dataintegration. Rather, we argue that complexity-oriented interdisciplinarycollaboration raise questions about where to locate the “interdisciplinarity” and its effects. We find that an qualification of interdisciplinary obesityresearch requires an attendance to of how different “obesities” come toco-exist in different and new ways through collaboration. Interdisciplinary obesity research in practice demands: 1. strategic balancing of academic investments between individual, collective goals. 2. the ability toembody and maintain monodisciplinary identities and indexes. 3. a cleararticulation of what constitutes research practice standards for each participant. These points can guide the development of evaluation measuresfor intersdiciplinary research