Chemical engineers working together with social scientists to develop chemical technology for a socially just and sustainable future: it sounds promising, but how does this happen in practice? What does it take to collaborate across disciplinary boundaries? By ethnographically engaging in everyday research practice, the current project will take a close look at such an interdisciplinary R&D initiative: the Urban Waste and Circular Economy (UWCE) research consortium at Ghent University. By observing and interpreting what is happening on the one hand and feeding these findings back to the research process on the other, we not only set out to develop a groundbreaking conceptual understanding of socio-technical collaboration in terms of boundary work, but we are also convinced that this will cultivate a reflexive awareness enabling researchers to unlock the actual potential of interdisciplinarity.