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Humanities World Report 2015
by Poul Holm, Arne Jarrick, and Dominic Scott

Introduction
The purpose and scope of this report

This is a first attempt to assess the worldwide state of the humanities. We
present this report fully conscious that it will be found wanting in important
aspects. Yet we believe that an attempt, however faltering, must be made tomap on a global scale what humanists think about what they do and how thefield is changing. There has been no shortage of commentary on the humanities over the last few years. The topic has been discussed intensively innational reports, essays, books, newspaper articles, not to mention social
media. Most of the commentary on the subject to date tends to come from theperspective of a particular country or region. Our aim is to look at somefamiliar – and some less familiar – questions from a global perspective bylistening to voices from all continents.
The report will be of use firstly to the research community and secondly
to academic leaders and research policy stakeholders. We aim to set a baseline against which future developments in the world of the humanities may beevaluated. Our main topics are:• Attempts by researchers and others to articulate the value of the humanities
worldwide• The ways in which humanists describe the nature of what they do and thedegree to which it is seen as distinct from the natural and social sciences• The channels through which humanists attempt to communicate theirresearch beyond the Academia• Features of the culture of humanities research: attitudes towards interdisciplinary research; responses to globalisation; reactions to the ever-increasingrole of digitisation• Changes in funding patterns and problems of research infrastructure• Relations between the humanities and the societies that fund themThis report is not a battle cry for the humanities in the 21st century since we108Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 6 2015

think that there is a need for cool analysis and reflection. We end by making
some recommendations about ways forward and challenges to be met. These
conclusions are based on our analysis of the state of the art presented in
Chapters 2–8. We are, of course, deeply committed to the humanities, but wehave tried not to let our findings be occluded by wishful thinking.

Some qualifications

In this introduction we set out in more detail the questions that have framed
our work and describe each chapter’s agenda. We also detail the sources on
which we have relied and describe the process by which we conducted our
research over a period of 30 months. But first we need to make three qualifications.
First, this report focuses upon humanities research rather than education.
In this respect it differs from much of the commentary on the humanities,
whether in national reports or books, which often considers (or laments) the
fate of teaching in the humanities. Our main reason for limiting the project inthis way is practical since including undergraduate education as one of ourcentral themes would have meant a considerable expansion in the scope of the
project. Of course, we do not deny that education and research are connected.
Where small group teaching is concerned, seminars with undergraduatesallow for an exchange of ideas that can stimulate new research. Even whensuch a luxury is not on offer, giving a class to a large group of students canlead a researcher to familiarise themselves with an area that may thenbecome a research interest. Finally, there is the basic fact that changes inundergraduate numbers affect the numbers of researchers, since the same
people typically teach as well as research (regardless of whether the former
activity feeds the latter). So, for all these reasons, there is no denying the link
between the two. Nonetheless, it is still feasible for a humanities report tofocus on research, introducing undergraduate education only as a subordinate
theme. Making teaching one of the principal themes would certainly haveadded breadth to our work; but it is not as if our conclusions and findings are
somehow undermined because we have limited our focus.
Second, there is the old question of how to define the humanities. Whatis the rationale for grouping together a particular set of academic disciplines
as ‘the humanities’? This is a notoriously difficult question. An obvious
answer – that the humanities study the human – is clearly too superficial,because the medical sciences and psychology also study ‘the human’, as do
the social sciences. Despite all the attempts that have been made to answer
this question, there is no consensus; some even suspect that the grouping ismerely a contingent fact about the recent history of academia. We take nostand on whether ‘the humanities’ are a bona fide group of academic disci-

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plines, whether they constitute a ‘natural kind’ and what it is that might unify
them into a single group. Instead, our approach is entirely pragmatic. We startfrom the fact that, as things are in most universities around the world, aparticular set of disciplines happens to be grouped together under theumbrella term, ‘the humanities’: history, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, religious studies, literature, linguistics, musicology, art history, classicalstudies, media studies and cultural studies. It is true that the grouping differsfrom one region to the next. The separation between the social sciences andthe humanities is more sharply drawn in Europe and the US than, say, in
Latin America or Russia. Thus, sociology might well be included among thehumanities in some regions, but not in others. But we have, on the whole,
limited ourselves to the list of disciplines just mentioned. Finally, we should
say something at the outset about who we are as authors of this report. We
call this book a report because it attempts to give an account of the state of
the humanities, together with some recommendations about the future. Suchis the remit of many documents that call themselves reports. However, manysuch reports are commissioned and funded by national (or regional) bodies
and publish their findings and recommendations on behalf of a national
agency or some similar body. As such, they need to be representative of theentity for which they speak. For instance, in 1999 UNESCO sponsored andproduced the World Social Science Report. This project involved the formationof a committee and the selection of several authors from around the world, insuch a way as to satisfy the need to be a truly representative body appropriate to UNESCO. The same organisation produced follow-up reports in2010 and 2013. We applaud the efforts of the editorial board and the authors.
However, we are doing something different. We are not claiming to represent
any organisation, region or country. We are three academic researchers who
sought and obtained funding from different organisations in Europe. Using
these funds, we ran our own research project and have written up the results
accordingly. Doubtless the product reflects our backgrounds and perspectives.
But we hope that it will be judged on its own merits like any other piece of
academic research. In short, this is a report about the world, but not (as itwere) by the world (i.e. commissioned by some kind of world organisation).

Our sources

Our work started in earnest in August 2011. Prior to that, we had written aproposal that outlined the purposes of the project and set out what we
intended to cover in each chapter. To begin, we embarked upon a survey ofexisting national reports into the humanities (though sometimes these covered
the humanities and social sciences). For instance, reports existed about the
US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries, India,

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sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. In addition, the EU had commissioned an
ongoing project of reports into the humanities and social sciences not just in
EU countries, but also in other European nations, Brazil, Israel, Japan andTurkey (these are known as the METRIS reports). Our first task was tocollate all these reports, mine them for information and data, and compare theresults across regions. We then turned our attention to books and articles byprominent advocates of the humanities, as well as commentaries in the press
and elsewhere. Perhaps what makes our work distinctive is that we haveconducted a series of interviews with leading humanities scholars around theworld: 89 interviews, covering 41 countries in 5 continents. These have
proved an invaluable source of information and insight, and most of thechapters use the results extensively. Although we interviewed some scholars
at the beginning of their careers, the great majority were senior academics:
many were heads of departments or humanities deans; a few had taken aleading role in national associations or funding bodies. All showed a detailed
knowledge of the state of the humanities in their country or region. Somewere also scholars who had worked in more than one country, such as aEuropean now working in Asia, or an Asian working in North America. The
guiding methodological principle was to ensure a diversity of opinions,achieved by interviewing scholars from a wide variety of disciplines and frommany different nations around the globe. Throughout, we opted for qualitative
rather than quantitative analysis. The scholarly community of the humanities
in Europe probably consists of more than 100,000 academics and in the world
there may be upwards of a million humanists. We did not have a databaseand manpower at our disposal to do a representative sample and questionnaire. Instead, we opted for discursive analysis and carried out in-depth,
45–60 minute interviews based on a fixed set of questions or, in some cases,
received written responses to our questions. We tested our preliminary interpretations of interviews by bringing informants to regional workshops. The
goal was to map the range of opinions and approaches to a strict set of questions. This methodology ensures a depth of understanding of the difference of
opinions that are likely to exist in a given community. The methodology
works on the principle that within a bounded rationale there is a limited setof positions available and it is therefore possible to map opinions by using a
relatively small sample. But the method does not yield results that are quantitatively representative; we cannot say which statements or opinions are
representative of the humanities, but we can say which line of reasoning
resonates within a certain region. In a sense, the respondents were chosen at
random; sometimes they were contacts we already had, or were contacts ofcontacts. Sometimes, we identified them as a result of attending a particular
humanities conference. But we arrived at the final list of respondents bymany different routes. On the whole, the respondents did not know each

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other, and so we are confident that we have avoided the risk of ‘group think’.
Certainly, there is a great deal of variety among the answers.
We compiled a list of questions initially, and then tested it out on a small
group of humanists. Having made some revisions, we conducted around 40
interviews in several countries. As a result of this process, we saw that thequestions could be changed, so we created a slightly different questionnaire
for the remaining half of the process. However, the two questionnaires are sosimilar that there have been few problems in collating the results of the interviews as a whole. Both sets of questions are reproduced in the Appendix. The
questions covered all the main points of our original proposal (and morebesides). The interviews were conducted in different ways: sometimes a
respondent would simply fill in the questionnaire and send it back overe-mail; in other cases we conducted an interview, recorded it and then wrote
up the transcript; in some cases, the interviewer asked the questions, took
notes, wrote up the interview and then sent back a draft to the respondent,
who was then free to comment and change as appropriate.
The interviewees covered the following disciplines:• Archaeology 3• Cultural studies 5• Classics 4• History 20• Linguistics 5• Literature 17• Media studies 3• Philosophy 15• Religion 2• Other (mostly a humanities/social sciences blend) 15
The breakdown by region was:
• Africa (Af): 13 (Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa,
Tanzania, and Zambia)• Asia (As): 16 (China, India, Japan, Mongolia, Taiwan and Thailand)• Australia (Au): 4• Europe (E): 16 (Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, theNetherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK)• Latin America (LA): 9 (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay)• MENA region (ME): 6 (Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia andTurkey)• North America (NA): 16 (Canada and the US)

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• Russia (R): 9.
Respondents were 28 female, 61 male.
To preserve respondent anonymity we use a code, such as Af1/ME2, when
quoting them.
To validate our preliminary interpretation of the interviews, we subsequently held workshops focused on particular regions. In May 2013 we held
one in Taipei involving scholars from Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and Asianists
from the US. In June 2013 we held a workshop at the University ofCambridge, to which we invited a group of Russian humanists. In October
2013 we held a workshop at the University of Virginia, to which we invited
scholars from Latin America (Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru), the workshop also included scholars from the US who were from or were working on
Latin American countries. Finally, we co-funded a conference on the humanities in Nanjing, China, in May 2013 involving participants from China,
India, Europe and the US. These events gave us the opportunity to go beyond
the information we had already received via the interviews. Typically, theworkshop participants had done an interview before attending.

Outline of the report

In the chapters that follow, we pursue what we consider to be some of themost important topics for a humanities report.
In Chapter 2, we start with perhaps the best-known issue: the value ofthe humanities. How do people, especially advocates of the humanities, articulate the value of humanities research in different countries around theworld? Are there any patterns that come to light when one compares theanswers to this question in different countries? We start with a list of thevalues most typically attributed to the humanities, such as social cohesion,
cultural heritage and critical thinking. We then give an outline account of
each, and show which values are most commonly highlighted around theworld. Although much of our discussion is descriptive, sketching ‘the state of
the art’, we also offer some more critical comments, and warnings, about therisks of espousing certain values.
In Chapter 3, we turn to the nature of the humanities and break the chapter
into two parts. First, we ask what sorts of themes or approaches are mostprevalent in humanities research today and what ones may be emerging. For
instance, are phenomena such as digitisation or internationalisation having
any effect on the sorts of themes researchers are choosing to work upon? In
the second part we broach the question of how humanities scholars conceiveof their disciplines. Do they see them as fundamentally different from thesciences (natural or social)? In particular, do they attempt to make advances

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in knowledge, to attain findings and make breakthroughs? Or do they
consider their role to be more one of raising questions than answering them,or of telling narratives and trying out new perspectives?
Chapter 4 is devoted to another area where recent developments may or
may not be meshing well with humanists’ attitudes and culture. This is thearea of digital humanities (DH). In the first half of the chapter we try to givea snapshot of the sheer scale of activities around the world and the different
kinds of digital projects pursued. Based on information available online, we
provide a survey of DH centres around the world and give a classification of
the kinds of projects they fund and promote. There is no doubting the scaleof activity. But what about mainstream humanists? Are they convinced thatthese new technologies and projects are paying real intellectual dividends? Do
they even understand what is going on? In order to answer such questions,
we asked our interviewees for their views on the digital humanities.
Chapter 5 considers the ways in which humanists communicate or conduct
their research beyond the borders of the Academia. Interestingly, there is noteven an agreed term for this. As a starting point we take, by way of comparison, the way in which medical science tackles this issue, as in the process bywhich research gets from ‘bench to bedside’ – not to say that the humanities
should ape the medical sciences, but because they provide an interesting
point of reference. They also provide us with a term to use, ‘translation’(‘translational medicine’ is the expression used for the process of bringing
research into clinical use). In this chapter we gather together information
about the attempts of humanists to move beyond academic boundaries. There
are several quite different modes in practice: reaching out to high schools;
consultancy; museum work and public exhibitions; media work (newspaper,
radio or TV); and working with policy makers. We have gathered information
on such activities from a few national reports (particularly in the US), but
most of our data comes from our own interviews, where we asked respondents directly about their attitude to, and their experience of, translation. As
well as surveying the different kinds of translation, we raise the question of
how far institutional conditions actually facilitate or obstruct it.
Chapter 6 considers some issues about the culture of the humanities andthe extent to which it is keeping pace with certain technological or institutional developments. We look at two phenomena from this perspective: interdisciplinarity and internationalisation. Many humanists have long felt
attracted to the idea of crossing disciplinary boundaries in their research andthere is evidence that funding bodies encourage or even require this.
Although the interest in interdisciplinary research is not new, it is important
to ask whether the pressure to engage in it actually meshes both withresearchers’ own inclinations and with basic professional incentives. Is inter-

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disciplinary research actually of benefit to researchers as they attempt to riseup the career ladder or is it rather a risk to move out of mono-disciplinary
expertise, especially in terms of publication prospects? In short, are professional conditions really aligned with institutional aspirations towards interdisciplinary research? In the second half of the chapter we consider what might
be called a parallel question about internationalisation. It is a cliche to talk of
globalisation and the breaking down of national boundaries. It is a fact of life
everywhere and affects the humanities profoundly. Communications havebeen transformed over the last few years by e-mail and the Internet (our own
project would have been impossible without all this). International networks
and publishing outlets have mushroomed. So, the question arises as to howhumanists themselves are reacting to this. Is globalisation leading tohomogenisation of research, especially through the use of English as acommon language?
Chapter 7 is about funding and infrastructure, also issues that we raisedin the questionnaire. We were interested first in whether respondents had
noticed significant changes in funding in recent years. Obviously, in somecountries funding is a great deal better than in others. But what about actualchanges for better or worse? This question is particularly salient in the wakeof the financial crisis and the subsequent (if slow) recovery. Does economic
progress in some developing countries spark investment in the humanities?
Are there clear regional differences in the perception of challenges andopportunities? In the second half of the chapter we consider what infrastructure needs our respondents have. It is quite typical for humanists to say thatthey are cheap and need little funding, but is this actually the case? If offered
the chance for more resources, where do our interviewees think they shouldbe spent?
Finally, in Chapter 8 we turn to the relation between humanities andpolitics. In many ways, this has been an undercurrent in previous chapters
since many think the value of the humanities is precisely its contribution tosociety (such as social cohesion and social decision-making). Translation (oroutreach) is very much about the ways in which academia makes its work
known and used by society at large. Issues of funding sooner or later involvereferences to the taxpayer. But in this last chapter we bring the relation
between humanities and society to the forefront. Specifically, we are interested in the expectations that humanists have of their society and, in turn,what their society expects of them, especially as evidenced by the attitudes ofgovernmental bodies towards the humanities. In this chapter we make particular use of national reports (especially from the US, South Africa and theEU). Given the time at which we are writing, we have ended up with aparticular focus on two regions: the US, especially the arguments between

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Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH); and the
EU where, at the time of writing, the Commission is in the process ofdeciding how to distribute research funds over the next seven years. On the
one hand there is the very real prospect of significant funding coming to thesocial sciences and the humanities; on the other, there is the likelihood that
this will come with strings attached – such that only projects focused onquite specific and ‘utilitarian’ themes will have any chance of being funded.
At the end of the report, we provide a conclusion, to draw out the main
themes of our research, and then a list of recommendations.
Although it has taken us considerable time and effort to compile thisreport, we hope it will not take long to read. Throughout, we have taken a‘straight talking’ approach, the organisation of the material is straightforward
and the topics have been arranged in a relatively intuitive list. There is nonecessity to read the chapters and subsections in order. Instead, the report canbe used as a reference compilation or handbook, it invites the reader to dip inand out of sections without reading full chapters.

Prospects for the future

In our research we have had innumerable conversations and encounters,
not just in the course of conducting the interviews or giving presentations atworkshops and conferences, but also around the fringes of conferences, or as
part of soliciting interviews and inviting feedback. Among all the comments
we have had, two stand out as the most common. On a positive note, a large
number of people commented on the importance of what we are doing, theydescribed a world humanities report as timely and necessary, sometimes evenas urgently needed. But there was another kind of reaction when our project
was described as ‘very ambitious’. After all, we were attempting to survey thestate of the humanities worldwide and assess the challenges for the future.
That itself is a challenge of almost bewildering proportions.
We agree. Our project is as ambitious as it is worthwhile. But we makeno apology, it had to be done, or it is at least one step in a longer-term
process that has to be started. Many of the issues we address are alreadywell-known (the value of the humanities, similarities to or differences fromthe sciences, interdisciplinarity, the digital humanities, funding and the relation between the humanities and society). But to come at them from a global
perspective, comparing reports, commentaries and interviews from many
countries brings an entirely new perspective to these well-worn issues.
Furthermore, the very process of conducting the research – creating thecontacts, building the goodwill, setting up a template for future research –might help build a worldwide platform for the humanities.
So we see our effort, substantial as it has been, as a first step. Doubtless

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there are all sorts of ways in which future (or follow-up) reports can improveupon what we have done: more interviews, with different questions, coveringa larger number of countries; the systematic collection of statistical data. We
also explored the possibility of an electronic survey to elicit responses to ourissues from a thousand humanists around the world, and have created a pilot
questionnaire. This would in itself create a set of important and valuablestatistics. In the end we decided not to do this because of a shortage of timeand manpower. But it is important for someone to take the first step towards
a truly global look at the humanities. If it is distinctive of the humanities tostudy our humanity, it should study our collective and global humanity. Thatis the spirit in which we have conducted our work and we trust that it will beread and judged in that way.
* Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license,
visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Poul Holm, Professor, Trinity College Dublin
Poul Holm is Trinity Long Room Hub Professor of
Humanities, Trinity College Dublin, and Presidentof the European Consortium of Humanities
Institutes and Centres. In the past he has been
Professor of Maritime History at the University ofSouthern Denmark, and Rector (President) of the
University of Roskilde. He has served on national
and European committees such as the Danish
Research Council for the Humanities (chairman
2001-5), the European Society for Environmental
History (President 2005-7), and the EU DG
Research METRIS group (chairman 2008-9). His doctoral thesis examined theimpact of war on everyday life in Norway, Sweden and Denmark between
1550 and 1914. He has published on fisheries history and marine environmental history; coastal communities and culture; and the Viking settlements
in Ireland. He is currently chair of the History of Marine Animal Populations
project, HMAP, which is a global project of some 100 associate historians,
archaeologists and marine scientists aiming to understand human impact on
ocean ecology.

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Arne Jarrick, Professor, Stockholm University
Arne Jarrick is a Professor of History, Stockholm
University, where he is a member of The Centre
for Study of Cultural Evolution (of which he wasone of the founders). He is Secretary General for
the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Swedish
Research Council (2007-2012), and also a memberof The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Among his many international research policy
activities should here be mentioned that he participated in the European Commission’s mapping of
emerging SSH research in Europe (The Metris
Report). He has written widely on the history of mentalities (see for instancehis Back to Modern Reason), but is now focused on cultural evolution where
he is running a project on the long-term global history of law-making, fromthe Code of Hammurabi to the Napoleonic Code.
Dominic Scott, Professor, University of Virginia
Dominic Scott is a Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Virginia. He specialises in ancient
Greek philosophy, and has written extensively on
Platonic, Aristotelian and Hellenistic philosophy. In
contemporary philosophy he works on a range ofapplied topics, including trust and intellectual
property. He earned his PhD in Classics at the
University of Cambridge, where he went on to
become a Lecturer in the Faculty of Philosophy
and a Fellow of Clare College. He has also held
visiting appointments at Princeton and Harvard,
and been a Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington DC.
While at Cambridge he co-founded the Forum for Philosophy in Business, a
research centre dedicated to the study of philosophical issues that arise inbusiness and public life, which brought together academics from various
fields and practitioners in business, the professions and government.