The humanities’ advantage: a new report from the UK attempts to highlight their value in today’s world. From the report:

Employability and transferable skills

These headlines suggest research in these fields is strong, but what of the value of education in these disciplines? The number of UK students choosing Humanities subjects suggests they continue to recognise the value of degrees that fit them not narrowly for any one particular career but which (along with other Arts, Humanities and Social Science [AHSS] disciplines) develop the talents and skills needed for a wide range of careers, many of which we are not yet even able to imagine.

Health and wellbeing

Outside the response to COVID, many other projects from the Humanities have been addressing key health and wellbeing challenges that are central to society’s current concerns….

Technology

As one might hope, the Humanities also have a lot of impact in questions around technology and are a major contributor to the shaping of our digital future. The Humanities bring a humanistic approach to the big issues of technology, recognising and addressing problems that run deep in our relationship with technology but which the technical disciplines do not have the resources or methods to name or resolve.

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[A]s noted by a recent HEPI [Higher Education Policy Institute] piece by Christopher Daley, rhetoric in the Government’s research funding strategy appears to downplay the position of the Arts and Humanities in the UK’s ambition to become a ‘science superpower’. As Daley notes, for the UK Research and Development agenda to be as effective as it possibly can be, it must include the Arts and Humanities disciplines as a transformative part of our response to the great challenges of our times….

Above all, the recommendation of this report is that the focus needs to be on connecting our disciplines (AHSS or SHAPE and STEM) – and preserving disciplinary breadth. Maximum impact for society can only be achieved through bringing combined multi-disciplinary perspectives to bear on the key challenges we face because, put simply, those challenges are not discipline based.

Our research in the UK has a particular opportunity precisely because we have world-leading expertise in the Humanities which many other countries do not have. This is our unique advantage, and our opportunity is in finding the most effective ways to focus the combined power of our disciplines around key challenges through a multifaceted method.