Instead of forcing students into academic silos, interdisciplinary degrees help integrate knowledge across different areas. If a traditional degree offers a student a hammer to which all problems are a nail, an interdisciplinary degree puts the problem first and allows the student to find the most appropriate tool from a range of academic disciplines.

To ensure that the economics taught at LIS is relevant to the real world, we need to recognise that it’s not a closed system, but part of something much bigger and much more complex. What students learn about now will change the future landscape of society. Everything from the environment to trade to politics will be impacted by the knowledge and skill sets of current students.

When people discuss interdisciplinarity or the narrowness of much university education they often cite a famous extended essay by C P Snow, written in 1958-9, called The Two Cultures.

A recent comment in the LIS office escalated into an excited debate among team members over which books they would recommend to future polymaths.

Human brains are powerful, but they can struggle to deal with all this complexity. Perhaps the biggest limitation our brains place on our ability to handle complex problems is our working memory. Our working memory is limited to just 4-7 items of information at any one time. Any more than that and we are easily overwhelmed. Think of that feeling you get when you are asked to memorise a 10 digit phone number in a few seconds. That’s cognitive overload! And that is always the risk when you learn anything new, or are confronted with any new problem.