When collaboration needs to produce a coherent scientific whole, Clowder Works provides the dedicated integration function that ambitious interdisciplinary projects need — aligning concepts, methods, data, and stakeholder perspectives across disciplines and work packages.
Definition
Research integration is the work of making disciplines, methods, data, and stakeholders genuinely work together in a collaborative research project. It is the core practice of inter- and transdisciplinary research.
It connects concepts, methods, and data across disciplinary boundaries into one coherent research design. It helps people across fields understand each other, resolve mismatches, and build shared ways of thinking.
The result is knowledge that no single discipline could produce alone — and that only emerges when integration is treated as a deliberate, methodological practice.
“A project manager keeps the project on schedule. An integrator keeps the science coherent.”
The missing link
Integration matters because it helps a collaboration produce more than a collection of separate contributions. It creates shared understanding across disciplines and connects different kinds of expertise.
Even more, it turns diversity in methods, data, and perspectives into new scientific value. That makes projects more coherent, proposals more credible, and outcomes more relevant to research and practice.
It also gives Principal Investigators the space to focus on scientific leadership, while integration is handled as a recognised part of the work.
“Integration ensures coherence and creation of new value.”
How Clowder Works can help
For research consortia
Clowder Works joins your team as an embedded integration partner on a specific funding application — designing the integration logic, structuring work packages so disciplines genuinely connect, and mapping stakeholder knowledge across the proposal.
For Horizon Europe and national calls, this increasingly determines whether an ambitious interdisciplinary proposal is seen as credible and deliverable.
For research teams
Structured support for alignment across work packages, disciplines, and stakeholder groups throughout the life of a funded project.
Facilitated workshops, communication structures, and reflection formats that surface misalignments early — before they become delays, duplication, or scientifically incompatible outputs.
For institutions and research networks
Workshops and structured training in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration, facilitation, integration frameworks, and stakeholder engagement.
Designed for research leadership seeking to build this capacity across their institution — so integration becomes part of how collaborative research is designed and run, not an afterthought.
The name
A clowder is the collective noun for a group of cats — an old English word for things gathered in a loose, independent bunch. It is a precise metaphor for interdisciplinary research: independent experts with different goals and strong opinions, who do not naturally move as one.
The name is inspired by Herding Cats: Integrative Leadership Strategies in Inter- and Transdisciplinary Research Programs — a paper by L. Deutsch and colleagues (Sustainability Science, 2025) — which uses the cat-herding metaphor to name what is genuinely hard about leading complex collaborative research: ensuring that the perspectives of independent specialists become truly integrated, not merely parallel.
Clowder Works takes that challenge as its core purpose.
“A clowder only moves together when someone does the integration work.”
Whether you’re designing a proposal, mid-project, or building institutional capacity — get in touch to discuss how Clowder Works can help.