Cross-disciplinary research can accelerate Nigeria’s quest for national development, a professor of English, Aderemi Raji-Oyelade, has said.
Raji-Oyelade said while delivering the lecture matriculation lecture of Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, recently that researchers from various fields working together to solve problems would help overcome the challenges posed by over-specialisation.
Speaking on the topic: “STEM to STEAM: Advancing the potential of Cross-disciplinary literacies”, Raji-Oyelade who serves as Dean, Faculty of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences at the university, said it was time to popularise cross-disciplinary scholarship for national development.
“A university is expected to be a centre of varying disciplines fused into a unilateral hub of knowledge, harnessing the resources of each field in the interest of humanity. The essence is to be able to integrate more, and make the university more resourceful and instrumental in solving the problems of the common man,” he said.
While noting that specialisation was necessary, the don who is on loan from the University of Ibadan, said the versatile researcher in the present age dominated by technology had to be knowledgeable about other fields.
He said: “What does it mean to be literate in the age of (the new media) of multiple scholarships and multiple literacies? Without doubt, the new understanding of literacy in the new age is such that it invites multiple definitions, for literacy itself is a plural activity.
“How do we popularize the potential of cross-disciplinary scholarships for national development? How can we overcome the limitations of over-specialisation and maximize the advantages of it for national development? How do we maximize the dialogue of the disciplines… as a necessary means of attaining intellectual fullness?”
“Specialisations are necessary; specialisations are industrial inventions of the Malthusian imagination…But at its worst example, specialisations breed the indiscipline of mutually exclusive disciplines.
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“But in this century it is those who are capable of crossing the boundaries of the disciplines who will make the difference; it is those who possess the ability of disciplinary transgressions who can interact beyond the borders of their own specialisations; those who privilege horizontal collaborations (across the planks or branches of the disciplines); those who embrace the advancement and deployment of technology in SSH, Education… and those who are not afraid to embrace the qualitative power of the imagination even when they are engaged in the empirical world of scientific.”
The Don also underscored the importance of the humanities in development, saying focus on only science and technology could be dangerous for the world.
“The promotion of scientific inventions without artistic/humanistic interventions is a movement towards mechanistic chaos, what can be imagined as progressive backwardness. Scientific/technological advancement without (the) ethical consideration of things runs the risk of foisting a generation of Frankensteins on the society,” he said.
Seventy-one students took the matriculation oath of the university. The set is the fourth since the institution’s inception in 2015.
In his speech, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Steve Afolami praised the Catholic Church, which owns the school, for giving its management the freedom to operate, a situation he said is not common with private university owners.
“We thank the proprietor, His Eminence, the Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Dr. Alfred Adewale Martins, the Chancellor, the chairman and members of the Board of Trustees, the Pro-chancellor and members of the Governing Council for the immense support they have given since inception and the freedom given to the vice chancellor and his management team to govern the university according to best practices as recognised internationally and as desired by the National University Commission,” he said.
Afolami also said the school had academic awards for high achieving students.