All Together Now? Building Disciplinary and Inter-Disciplinary Research Capacity in Social Work and Social Care

Amidst calls for a ostep change' in the quality of social work and social care research come contrasting claims for inter-disciplinarity on the one hand and disciplinarity on the other. Drawing on the findings of a UK-based consultation, this paper situates the challenges of research capacity development in contexts of wider preoccupations with research impact and inter-disciplinarity, and the problematic distinction between social work as a research discipline and social care as a discipline-transgressing research field. Arguing that both disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity are best examined as epistemic and social phenomena, both are considered in terms of claims to knowledge, developmental trajectories, forms of social organisation and cultural practice, and contributions to contemporary knowledge markets. This analytic framework is used to scrutinise the diverse understandings of disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity, along with their opportunities and threats, brought by UK social work academics and cognate discipline representatives to the challenges of research capacity development. Contrasts and commonalities with wider contexts are highlighted. The argument concludes that disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity are co-dependent. Strategies for building social work and social care research excellence and impact will best succeed if they pay heed both to distinctive disciplinary needs and to enhancing cross-fertilisation, integration and collaboration.