The Unit for Interdisciplinary Studies > 

This page is updated for the academic year 2023-2024.
Information for the academic year 2024-2025 will be updated in the coming days.
 

Introduction 

The Renaissance man had command of substantial and diverse spheres of knowledge, and was well familiar with all human cultural achievements. With the advent of academia and its transition into scientific academia, rigid barriers arose between the different branches of knowledge. Instead of integrated knowledge, clearly defined scientific disciplines developed. This reality shaped the character of scholarship until recent times.

In the last several decades, however, a revolution has been taking place, returning academia once again to the Renaissance period. The barriers between areas have begun to crack, and knowledge has once again become interdisciplinary.

Bar-Ilan University has placed itself in the forefront of that revolution and has opened a unit that encompasses five programs whose knowledge areas are interdisciplinary. Unlike multidisciplinary areas, which can be broken down into the basic units that comprise it, an interdisciplinary domain cannot be disassembled and positioned on a platform of primary knowledge areas without losing something of the essence of the new interdisciplinary knowledge. The interdisciplinary sphere shapes a completely new knowledge area, formed not only by means of study but also by new bodies of knowledge, and entails research that draws coherent meaning from the very thinking that breaches disciplinary boundaries.

In this spirit, the Senate Committee for Interdisciplinary Study has designed the following six interdisciplinary programs: 

• The Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies program – graduate studies 

• The Gender Studies program – graduate studies 

• The Science, Technology and Society program – graduate studies 

• The Conflict Resolution, Management and Negotiation program – graduate studies 

• The Neuroscience program – undergraduate studies 

• The Neuroscience program – graduate studies 

The programs are characterized by research and instructional excellence, and have made a name for themselves in Israel and abroad. Graduates of these programs who have gone on to post-doctoral positions and taken on key roles as academic faculty members in leading universities around the world, including Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley and UCL, can attest to that.

For further details 
contact The Unit for Interdisciplinary Studies 
Building 604, 3rd floor, or by phone at 03-5317756