Not just another interdisciplinary center
Interdisciplinary centers for the study of a given issue are common, as are centers that focus on one or another aspect of interdisciplinarity (e.g., the University of Bielefeld's Center for Interdisciplinary Research or Harvard's Project Zero), but no center has heretofore focused on the issue of interdisciplinarity in itself and, insofar as possible, in its entirety.
CSID seeks to generate a virtuous circle of interdisciplinarity by (1) providing resources and networking for researchers and students interested in interdisciplinary research and education; (2) promoting experiments in inter- and transdisciplinarity; (3) identifying institutional barriers to interdisciplinarity; (4) establishing indicators for the success or failure of interdisciplinary projects; and (5) developing a set of best practices for interdisciplinarity.