Abstract

The contemporary study looked into the extent and nature of supradisciplinary collaborations within Wageningen University and Research’s 2014-2018 investment theme Global One Health. An analysis of year reports showed the extent to which projects were supradisciplinarily operationalized, was fairly limited. Interviews with scientists from life sciences and social sciences revealed constraining, facilitating and undecided factors with regards to successfully effecting supradisciplinary collaborations between LS and SS. For all three categories, results yielded a significant role for interpersonal communications and relationships. Recommendations for future supradisciplinary work based on the study are: altering the image of SS, facilitating space to explore the unfamiliar, and using the available knowledge on successfully executing supradisciplinary collaborations. It seems more focus on the Social Nature of Global One Health could have been beneficial for the extent and nature to which the investment theme effected fruitful supradisciplinary collaborations between LS and SS.