The joy of interdisciplinary collaboration! Yes, there are barriers and challenges, but in setting up CUCo the main surprising outcomes were joy, a sense of meaning and creativity, in other words: collateral happiness.

With due pride CUCo announces the publication of a new paper, Finding joy, creativity and meaning through unusual interdisciplinary collaborations, recounting the journey of CUCO’s first two years: its origins, lessons learned, and recommendations for universities and funders to better support unusual collaborations.

The paper elaborates on three roadblocks to funding inter- and transdisciplinary research, as well as how these were overcome (or not!). These roadblocks are:

• Rewards and recognition,
• Funding trust-building and interdisciplinary collaboration,
• Competences, tools and approaches.

The open-access paper has been published in Nature’s Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.