New global alliance to ‘raise profile’ of humanities

Universities in every populated continent have banded together to boost their teaching, research and impact in the face of a belittling of the humanities and social sciences by a sceptical political class.

University of Melbourne historian Kate McGregor, one of the architects of the new Global Humanities Alliance, said it was about “protecting” and gaining recognition for the disciplines.

“When…people making decisions are thinking about the most pressing issues of the time, often it’s not the humanities or social sciences that they think of first,” said Professor McGregor, international associate dean of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts.

“A lot of people working in our area feel that we need to…raise more public awareness about the contributions that we make, so that we are not overlooked – either by politicians or anyone else in society – in terms of genuinely communicating what we do and how we think through complex problems.”

The founding members are Ashoka University near Delhi, Gadjah Mada University in Java, Mahidol University near Bangkok and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile in Santiago, along with the universities of Manchester, Melbourne, Nairobi and Toronto.

In a letter of intent signed in Manchester on 11 October, the institutions agreed to explore activities such as collaborative research projects, joint supervision, global classrooms, visiting fellowships and exchange programmes for both students and staff.

The work will initially focus around four core themes of “decolonising knowledge”, “digital transformations”, “public humanities” and “sustainability and climate change”. The alliance is building working groups on the four topics, each made up of two or three staff from each member university.

While the eight institutions consider the alliance a “starting point” for a potentially much larger network, Professor McGregor said she expected the original group to “consolidate” for the first year or so. “It’s a bit of an experiment. We’re really at the beginning stage, but it’s an exciting stage. We’ve all said to each other that we do not want this to be an MOU on paper.”

University leaders the world over expect a steadily increasing share of their teaching to be in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine, amid political perceptions that these disciplines harbour the best job prospects. Professor McGregor said such views were not limited to the Global North, but different regions had different ways of conceptualising key problems.

For example, initial discussions among alliance members had uncovered distinct meanings of the term “sustainability” and variations in people’s readiness to “accept or reject the framing” of sustainability.

“What does decolonising knowledge mean?” she added. “It might look very different…in Australia [compared to] Indonesia or India.”

While the idea of the alliance originated at Melbourne, Professor McGregor said it was an alliance of equals. She expected “more of a story to tell” in a year’s time.

“We’re at the start of the conversations...[but] already we can see that diversity coming out in terms of what people have to offer. We really are learning from each other.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com