Search

This paper focuses on how contributions are argued in research proposals in the humanities. Due to standardizing tendencies in research funding towards formats characteristic of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects, there has been concern that the humanities are marginalized. In this study, 'contribution statements' were identified in proposals funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation across the humanistic disciplines. These statements were systematically analyzed in terms of type and structure of contributions advanced. The results suggest that the humanities differ from the sciences in terms of specificity of focus, a high level of 'acceptable serendipity' in proposed outcomes, but that these disciplines structurally tend to adhere to the same types of research contribution arguments as STEM. A better understanding of the way in which humanities scholars frame contributions offers insight into how these fields change and how they relate to developments in the science policy and funding landscape.

This paper sets out to identify the ways in which academic libraries can further interdisciplinary scholarship on campus. The medical humanities is presented as an example to interrogate the current practices in academic libraries and to inform future efforts in support of interdisciplinarity. Text mining was employed to illuminate trends in this interdisciplinary field using program descriptions from universities with "very high research activity" as a data set for analysis. Based on these data, this article proposes best practices and opportunities for engagement in the medical humanities that may be applicable to other interdisciplinary fields served by research libraries.

Arts and humanities research appears to have a problem when it comes to making an argument that it matters to society. Despite widespread efforts within and beyond the field to document how arts and humanities research creates social value, these arguments have had little traction within public policy debates. The paper argues that other disciplines have been able to mobilise an "investment logic", based on a more nuanced model of how knowledge creates value, showing how investing in small research projects drives economic growth, highlighting, for instance, the direct links between universities, spin-offs, the biotech sector and large pharmaceutical firms. If one looks at arts and humanities research through this lens, it is possible to find examples of how individual pieces of arts and humanities research are translated upwards through first-order users, through networks, to create societal improvements: it is therefore possible to meaningfully argue for arts and humanities research driving societal value creation. The paper concludes by reflecting on how arts and humanities research might apply this wider model of research valorisation to better convey its societal benefits in contemporary science policy discussions.

The two most powerful psychological forces in human history have been without doubt violence and greed. The amount and degree of atrocities that have been committed throughout ages in various [...]

Princeton—Stanford Working Papers in Classics (PSWPC) is a web-based series of work-in-progress scripts by members of two leading departments of classics. It introduces the humanities to a new form of scholarly communication and represents a major advance in the free availability of classical-studies scholarship in cyberspace. This article both reviews the initial performance of this open-access experiment and the benefits and challenges of working papers more generally for classical studies. After 2 years of operation PSWPC has proven to be a clear success. This series has built up a large international readership and a sizeable body of pre-prints and performs important scholarly and community- outreach functions. As this performance is largely due to its congruency with the working arrangements of ancient historians and classicists and the global demand for open-access scholarship, the series confirms the viability of this means of scholarly communication, and the likelihood of its expansion in our discipline. But modifications are required to increase the benefits this series brings and the amount of scholarship it makes freely available online. Finally, departments wishing to replicate its success will have to consider other important developments, such as the increasing availability of post-prints, the linking of research funding to open access, and the emergence of new cyber-infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional "lone scholar" view of an Arts and Humanities doctoral student sits uneasily with the skills-based discourse underpinning policies aimed at enhancing researcher development and employability. This paper reports on a case study of a research training programme for doctoral students in the Arts and Humanities at a UK university. It calls for the embedding of the generic skills agenda within a more clearly articulated pedagogic discourse and formulates four pedagogic principles for research training programme design. Additionally, the paper problematises the research trainer role and highlights the importance of paying attention to the students' own learning agendas and the learning value they are prepared to derive from training. (Contains 2 notes and 1 table.)

Recent policy discourse suggests that arts and humanities research is seen as being less useful to society than other disciplines, notably in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The paper explores how this assumption's construction has been built and whether it is based upon an unfair prejudice: we argue for a prima facie case to answer in assuming that arts and humanities research's lower societal value. We identify a set of claims circulating in policy circles regarding science, technology, engineering and mathematics research and arts and humanities research's differences. We find two groups: arts and humanities research is less useful than science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and arts and humanities research is merely differently useful. We argue that empirical analysis is necessary to disentangle which ones are true to assess whether policy-making is being based on rational and evidence-based claims. We argue that debates about public research value should recognise that humanities have different (but equally valid) kinds of societal value.

Funding organisations are increasingly asking academics to show evidence of the economic and social value generated by their research. These requests have often been associated with the emergence of a so-called "new social contract for research" and are related to the implementation of new research evaluation systems. Although the research evaluation rhetoric is similar across countries and organisations, in practice evaluation can fulfil very different purposes. Additionally, the assessment of the public value of research poses different challenges depending on the academic field under analysis. This paper distinguishes three main research evaluation goals: to inform the distribution of public resources among competing objectives or performers, to help improve the implementation of policies and programmes, and to control the use of public funds. It then argues that assessing the value of research in the arts and humanities calls for a research methodology capable of providing a fine-grained understanding of the variety of, often diffuse, ways in which arts and humanities research can generate value. The methods that we need to do this are better suited to fulfil the improvement goal of evaluation, and require a "formative" approach to evaluation supporting the social engagement of academic researchers.

Arts/Humanities researchers frequently do not explain methodology overtly; instead, they "perform" it through their use of language, textual and historic cross-reference, and theory. Here, methodologies from literary studies are shown to add to Higher Education (HE) an exegetical and critically pluralist approach. This includes exploiting the connotative complexity of language. I appropriate Martin's term "magpieism" for her methodology in medieval literature studies in accordance with magpie tendencies to carry off and make use of whatever seems promising. This paper describes Martin's magpie approach to theory and methodology: a honing in on what seems important, then using a range of approaches and theories as they seem helpful. Examples demonstrate how methodology can be shown in prose and structure. Critical pluralism is shown to be epistemologically useful for HE methodology when one regards education itself as a "text" of social practice available for exegetical reading. This is something of a manifesto pushing back at science methodology's grip on education. Education, however, has responsibilities to maintaining ethical and aesthetic values negotiated through interrogation from different perspectives. The article points out that Arts/Humanities methodology--which can be implicit--can make significant contribution in HE, complementing science methods and enriching our understanding.

The research assessment framework is an unstable reality in many countries. While few would disagree that there is a need to measure and reward research excellence, there has been little investigation of how assessment mechanisms relate to knowledge itself. With a focus on the arts and humanities and writing from an Australian perspective, this paper draws together discussions of research assessment frameworks and forms of knowledge to consider what can and cannot be measured, and what we might gain from (or lose from not) measuring these things. We argue that the focus on measurable outputs risks a culture that favours effective packages of knowledge at the same time as ignoring the immeasurable, or hidden elements of research and scholarship--elements that Aristotle considered to underpin scholarship itself.

The increasing importance of the competition in global university ranking has resulted in a paradigm shift in academic governance in East Asia. Many governments have introduced different strategies for benchmarking their leading universities to facilitate global competitiveness and international visibility. A major trend in the changing university governance is the emergence of a regulatory evaluation scheme for faculty research productivity, reflected by the striking features of the recent changing academic profile of publication norms and forms that go beyond the territories of nation-states in the East and West. With the expansion of the Taiwanese higher education system in the last two decades, the maintenance of quality to meet the requirements for international competitiveness has become a key concern for policy makers. Since 2005, the Ministry of Education has introduced a series of university governance policies to enhance academic excellence in universities and established a formal university evaluation policy to improve the competitiveness and international visibility of Taiwanese universities. In so doing, the government has legalized a clear link between evaluation results and public funding allocation. Research performance is assessed in terms of the number of articles published in journals indexed by the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index and in terms of citation rates and associated factors. Therefore, evaluation has taken on a highly quantitative dimension. Despite the efforts of concerned parties to encourage academic excellence, the above-mentioned quantitative evaluation indicators have resulted in bitter complaints from the humanities and social sciences, whose research accomplishments are devalued and ignored by the current quantitative indicators. In this paper, the authors describe the recent petition for collective action initiated by university faculty to protest the privileging of SSCI and SCI publications as critical indicators for academic performance regardless of faculty discipline and specialization. The article concludes its argument with a group petition calling for more diverse and reliable indicators in recognizing the research of different natures and disciplines while creating culturally responsive evaluation criteria for social sciences and humanities in the Taiwanese academe. The article not only sheds light on academic evaluation literature, especially on the uncertain paradox of globalization and market economy, but also proposes alternatives to the evaluation system for humanities and social sciences in higher education.

The paper examines the impact of the transformations in doctoral education in the arts, humanities and social sciences in the United Kingdom over the past decade. It focuses on the introduction of formal research training and codes of research practice and in the first longitudinal candidate cohort study examines their impact on doctoral outcomes, especially Ph.D. submission rates. Results from this quantitative study show that engagement with research training, completion of a project outline and plan and appointment of a supervisory team were statistically positively associated with submission of the thesis within four years. It is concluded that the professionalisation of doctoral education by research training and codes of research practice has had a positive impact on doctoral educational outcomes. (Contains 1 figure and 5 tables.)

What are the humanities, and how should they be cultivated? With respect to this crucial question, opinions differ as to how widely the humanities should be construed and pursued. Initially connoting the study of Greek and Roman classics, the concept now more generally covers arts and letters, history, and philosophy. But does it also include the social sciences, which are often distinguished from the humanities and grouped as a separate academic division with greater pretensions to scientific status? And should our pursuit of humanistic study be concentrated on the traditional methods and topics of high culture that give the humanities an authoritative aura of established nobility, or should it extend to new and funkier forms of interdisciplinary research such as popular culture or race and gender studies? (Contains 37 notes.)

Discusses the proposal by South Africa's grant-making National Research Foundation (NRF) to introduce a ratings system for the humanities and social sciences comparable to that which pertains in the natural sciences. Welcomes this development and argues for full and open consultation with the research community regarding appropriate ratings criteria, offering examples of these fields' unique research practices. (EV)

In this paper, we draw on our own cross-cultural experience of engaging with different incarnations of the medical and health humanities (MHH) in the UK and South Africa to reflect on what is distinct and the same about MHH in these locations. MHH spaces, whether departments, programmes or networks, have espoused a common critique of biomedical dualism and reductionism, a celebration of qualitative evidence and the value of visual and performative arts for their research, therapeutic and transformative social potential. However, there have also been differences, and importantly a different 'identity' among some leading South African scholars and practitioners, who have felt that if MHH were to speak from the South as opposed to the North, they would say something quite different. We seek to contextualise our personal reflections on the development of the field in South Africa over recent years within wider debates about MHH in the context of South African academia and practice, drawing in part on interviews conducted by one of the authors with South African researchers and practitioners and our own reflections as 'Northerners' in the 'South'., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2018. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Presents a dialogue between National Endowment for the Humanities chairman, Lynne V. Cheney, and Modern Language Association president, Catharine R. Stimpson. Presents their views on literary criticism, teaching and research, feminism, the future of the humanities, and the search for enduring values in a pluralistic society. Examines the idea of a core curriculum in undergraduate study. (CH)

Australian institutions are developing and using performance indicators (number of publications, research grants, and of Ph.D. graduates) to distribute resources. Some of these are disadvantaging the Humanities. This paper addresses differences in chemistry, engineering, English, and law as they are described by other researchers. (Author/MLW)

The paper engages with a variety of data around a supposedly single biomedical event, that of heart transplantation. In conventional discourse, organ transplantation constitutes an unproblematised form of spare part surgery in which failing biological components are replaced by more efficient and enduring ones, but once that simple picture is complicated by employing a radically interdisciplinary approach, any biomedical certainty is profoundly disrupted. Our aim, as a cross-sectorial partnership, has been to explore the complexities of heart transplantation by explicitly entangling research from the arts, biosciences and humanities without privileging any one discourse. It has been no easy enterprise yet it has been highly productive of new insights. We draw on our own ongoing funded research with both heart donor families and recipients to explore our different perceptions of what constitutes data and to demonstrate how the dynamic entangling of multiple data produces a constitutive assemblage of elements in which no one can claim priority. Our claim is that the use of such research assemblages and the collaborations that we bring to our project breaks through disciplinary silos to enable a fuller comprehension of the significance and experience of heart transplantation in both theory and practice., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.)

INTRODUCTION For many years the annual meeting of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters has been a golden place to exchange ideas about the Pleistocene flora and fauna [...]

Research on nuclear technologies has been largely driven by a detachment of the 'technical content' from the 'social context'. However, social studies of science and technology--also for the nuclear domain--emphasize that 'the social' and 'the technical' dimensions of technology development are inter-related and co-produced. In an effort to create links between nuclear research and innovation and society in mutually beneficial ways, the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre started fifteen years ago a 'Programme of Integration of Social Aspects into nuclear research' (PISA). In line with broader science-policy agendas (responsible research and innovation and technology assessment), this paper argues that the importance of such programmes is threefold. First, their multi-disciplinary basis and participatory character contribute to a better understanding of the interactions between science, technology and society, in general, and the complexity of nuclear technology assessment in particular. Second, their functioning as (self -)critical policy supportive research with outreach to society is an essential prerequisite for policies aiming at generating societal trust in the context of controversial issues related to nuclear technologies and exposure to ionising radiation. Third, such programmes create an enriching dynamic in the organisation itself, stimulating collective learning and transdisciplinarity. The paper illustrates with concrete examples these claims and concludes by discussing some key challenges that researchers face while engaging in work of this kind., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Issues in curriculum and research that will arise during a period of change in higher education are discussed, including course content, trends toward vocational education, relationships with industry, technological change, scientific research, research support, academic freedom, the humanities, and governance and institutional management. (MSE)

The university allows trained people to search for new knowledge and go beyond into the methodology and assumptions of science. In the humanities, the university forces disciplines into contact with each other and with other fields. It is there that faith and reason can contend fruitfully and be reconciled. (MSE)

Reform in language and literature programs requires faculty to teach a mix of basic and advanced courses in language, composition, and literature to assure students access to the best teacher-scholars the college offers. The humanistic element in graduate education would also benefit from this improved undergraduate training. (MSE)

International collaboration is one of the effective ways to enhance the impact of scientific research papers. In this research, international research collaboration papers published by world-class universities in the field of humanities and social sciences from 2015 to 2019 were selected as the research object, and the effective enhancement of the impact of international research collaboration papers was found to not be dependent on expanding the scale of international research collaboration, but rather on selecting researchers with different international backgrounds and from high-level institutions for collaboration. It was also discovered that, in the field of humanities and social sciences, despite a relatively low proportion of international research collaboration papers being led by Chinese scholars, the Chinese research is characterized by a higher impact compared with the research led by non-Chinese scholars. In light of this, a series of proactive measures should be taken by China's world-class universities, such as actively participating in and initiating international collaboration, selecting high-level research collaborators, and attracting scholars from different countries to engage in research collaboration in the field of humanities and social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]