Rick Szostak

Biography

I began as an economic historian with broad interdisciplinary interests. I became frustrated at how hard it was to find relevant information across disciplines. A presentation to the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies encouraged me to write many books and articles about how to perform interdisciplinary research, teaching, and program administration. One barrier to interdisciplinarity is the way that our libraries and other information repositories organize information in disciplinary silos. I thus entered the field of Knowledge Organization where I found that my interdisciplinary experiences provided an entry into key debates in that field. World history allows me to combine all of these interests. My Making Sense of World History was inspired by an observation I came across that instructors and students in the field struggle to render the courses coherent. I have always believed that we can and should carefully draw lessons from history. The last chapter of my book did so. When I was coincidentally encouraged to investigate the possibility of a Future Studies course at my university, I was inspired to draft Making Sense of the Future, a book that integrates my expertise in history, interdisciplinarity, and knowledge organization.

I have followed my curiosity where it has taken me. Looking back, I see a logical flow to my research that was not always obvious at the time.

Education

PhD, Northwestern University, USA, 1985

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

World history
Economic history
Interdisciplinary Studies
Knowledge organization
Ethics
Future studies

Personal Interests

These days my main interest is travel, sometimes with my adult children.  I curl a bit, though not during the pandemic. I occasionally play poker.  I purposely avoid cluttering my life with too many activities. I increasingly appreciate the little things in life.

Websites

• Rick Szostak

Books

Articles