Analysing the recent government messaging on the value of university education, Zoe Hope Bulaitis, argues this rhetoric drastically simplifies how and where higher education adds value to society. In a predictable manner, the calculation of the economi…
Category: humanities
Excluding the social sciences, arts and humanities from reporting downplays their importance to research, development and innovation
Drawing on findings from a new report into how the social sciences, humanities and arts (SHAPE) disciplines are understood and deployed in policy and industry, Eleanor Hopkins suggests inconsistent reporting and incentives contribute underestimation of…
Governance by output reduces humanities scholarship to monologue
Drawing on a large-scale comparative study of scholars in the UK and Germany on how pressure to publish is experienced across research careers, Marcel Knöchelmann, argues that the structural incentive to publish inherent to research assessment in the U…
Evaluating the emotional impact of art
Many research projects in the humanities and social sciences result in creative and artistic outputs, but whilst a sprawling and contested industry has emerged to monitor and evaluate written research outputs, the impact of visual art is less well unde…
Podcast: Do we need the arts to change the world?
The latest episode episode of the LSE IQ podcast asks: Do we need the arts to change the world? As the UK government looks to recover from the costs of the pandemic its decision to cut funding for creative higher education courses could be seen as a pr…
Storylistening: why narrative evidence matters for public reasoning and how to use it
As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated narratives, qualitative or quantitative, can shape, guide and make sense of public policies. However, the way in which the listeners and readers of these narratives receive and engage with them is often taken a…
“Minimum expectations” are no way to value the arts, humanities, and social sciences
The UK government recently announced its intention to reduce funding for ‘low value’ degrees in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Drawing on her research into the history of higher education policy, Zoe Hope Bulaitis argues that current governm…
How the Mars landings took SHAPE – Assessing the contribution of social sciences, arts and humanities to space exploration.
Space exploration can be viewed as the quintessential achievement of technological and scientific modernity. In this post Thelma Obiakor, argues that by appreciating the contribution of the social sciences, humanities and arts (SHAPE disciplines) it is…
Without social sciences, humanities and arts, the goal of sustainability may never be reached
Eric Neumayer and Charles Joly argue that the key challenges posed by making a transition to a sustainable net-zero carbon economy are social, rather than technological. As such, instead of waiting for technological change to simply emerge, in the post…
Book Review: Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving In and Beyond the Classroom by Katina L. Rogers
In Putting the Humanities PhD to Work: Thriving In and Beyond the Classroom, Katina L. Rogers draws on personal experience, resources and interviews to offer a refreshing look at potential career pathways for humanities graduates to explore in and beyond the academy. With particular value for graduate students and academics within the humanities as well as administrators who … Continued