In her workshop titled “Hype or Hope?”, Sabine Lee offered a passionate plea for the societal relevance of interdisciplinary research and for bridging the gap between academia, politics, and the wider public. Drawing on concrete examples from her own projects, she argued that collaboration across disciplinary and institutional boundaries can yield tangible social and political impact—particularly when addressing the complex humanitarian and societal challenges of the 21st century.

The ensuing discussion centered on two main questions: How can universities and research institutions effectively integrate interdisciplinarity and intersectorality into their structures? And how do methodological distinctions between inter-, trans-, and multidisciplinarity shape research outcomes?

The event sparked a lively exchange on the institutional and epistemological implications of collaborative research, ultimately underlining the continued importance of European and global perspectives in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Sabine Lee is Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham. Her work focuses on the social consequences of war, particularly gender-based violence and children born of war. She has coordinated numerous international and intersectoral research networks, among them CHIBOW (Children Born of War), and currently leads an AHRC-funded project on peacekeeper-fathered children in Haiti. Her most recent monograph, Children Born of War in the Twentieth Century, exemplifies her commitment to combining historical, sociological, and policy-oriented perspectives.