Boundary Object Creation

topic

Boundary objects are epistemic objects — conceptual frameworks, artifacts, methods, or representations — that are plastic enough to be interpretable within multiple different disciplinary contexts while robust enough to maintain a common identity across those interpretations, enabling different disciplinary communities to collaborate without requiring consensus on their respective disciplinary frameworks. Star and Griesemer's sociological concept identifies the specific intellectual products that enable productive interdisciplinary connection.

Role

Boundary objects are the creative outputs that most directly enable interdisciplinary collaboration — because they provide a shared reference point that different disciplinary communities can each interpret through their own frameworks while maintaining enough common structure to enable productive joint work. The map that a geologist, an ecologist, an urban planner, and a community organizer can each read through their own disciplinary lens while working toward a shared conservation goal is a boundary object; the mathematical model that a biologist, a physicist, and a computer scientist each interpret differently while using it to advance shared research is a boundary object. Creating effective boundary objects is itself a high-level creative act that requires simultaneously holding multiple disciplinary perspectives.

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