What Does It Mean to Explain?

An interdisciplinary symposium report

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31273/eirj.v12i2.1828

Keywords:

interdisciplinarity, explanation, research communication, research culture, AI

Abstract

We summarise and reflect on the symposium ‘Let me explain: Reason-giving across disciplines’, held at the University of Warwick's Institute of Advanced Study in June 2024. The event brought together scholars from four faculties to discuss the concept of explanation and its relationship to interdisciplinarity. We pick out four questions that participants found especially stimulating: Is a good explanation really more than a good description? How does agency change the structure of explanations? Who explains to whom? And what does interdisciplinarity mean for the practice of explaining? We end by highlighting the refreshingly disruptive potential of genuinely interdisciplinary forums of knowledge-exchange.

Funder Acknowledgement

This symposium was supported by funding from the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick.

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Author Biographies

  • Yvette Yitong Wang, Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Yvette is a PhD student at the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. Her research involves intercultural communication and language pedagogy, teacher education, philosophical hermeneutics, and cultural psychology.

  • Simon Gansinger, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

    In 2023–24, Simon was an IAS Early Career Fellow. In August 2024, he took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Independent Research Group 'Criminal Law Theory' at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg, Germany. 

AI Generated: A group of people discuss and consider a problem together.

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Published

2025-06-12

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 2 (2025): Summer 2025

Section

Critical Reflections

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Yvette Yitong Wang, Simon Gansinger

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