New report articulates and celebrates the value of the Humanities

UCL Grand Challenges and the Institute for Advanced Studies have published a new report that examines and expresses the vital -and plural- roles of the Humanities in a rapidly changing world. As this report argues, they are crucial not only for a healthy society and a functioning democracy but also for innovation, business success, and competitive advantage across all fields and sectors.

The Humanities delve into fundamental questions about human existence. Their scope is as expansive and intricate as humanity itself, encompassing the study of cultures, values, ideas, beliefs, and systems of thought, traced back to the earliest human activities.

Despite being at the heart of institutions of learning since ancient times, the Humanities are currently at risk. Numerous UK universities have cut or closed Humanities departments, resulting in the loss of academic positions. 

In this context, the UCL Enquiry on A Case for the Humanities worked from 2020 to 2023 to explore and articulate the value of the Humanities. The Enquiry gathered reflections and insights from more than fifty academics drawn from all UCL's faculties, who were invited to question and consider, rather than to define or adjudicate. The Enquiry’s focus was on asking questions: it was not a process designed to yield a specific, single answer. 

The report offers the following key insights:

1. Interdisciplinarity: Humanities should not be viewed in opposition to the Sciences. Both fields have unique methodologies and can benefit from collaboration. Interdisciplinary research that includes Humanities perspectives enriches scientific and technological advancements, providing ethical, cultural, and historical contexts.
2. Use and Value: The Humanities must combat outdated notions that prioritise financial measures over broader societal benefits. There is a need to reframe the narrative around the Humanities, emphasising their role in fostering a more inclusive, thoughtful, and resilient society.
3. Confronting the Grand Challenges: The Humanities equip individuals with critical thinking, empathy, and creativity, essential for addressing global challenges such as climate change, political polarisation, and technological disruption.

What now? 

The Enquiry identified three principal areas for action:

1. Raising Awareness: Increasing understanding of the Humanities' value across society.
2. Empowerment: Equipping individuals and institutions with arguments and evidence to champion the Humanities. 
3. Proposals to UCL: Developing specific proposals to integrate the Humanities into broader institutional strategies.

This summary encapsulates the key points of the report, reflecting its thorough examination of the Humanities' role and the strategic steps proposed to secure their future. A Case for the Humanities is intended to act as a prompt for debate and discussion, and policy conversations.

Lead Authors 
Professor Maurice Biriotti
Professor Lee Grieveson
Dr Julia Jordan
Professor Nicola Miller
Dr James Paskins
Dr Ian Scott
Professor James Wilson

With contributions from
Dr Jen Allan
Christina Ballinger
Rowan Haslam
Ethne James-Souch
Celine Lowentha
Siobhan Morris

This report was undertaken in partnership between UCL’s Grand Challenge of Cultural Understanding and UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies. 

Find out more by downloading the new UCL report: A Case for the Humanities (2024)

“As this timely, insightful and erudite enquiry states, despite having been amongst the founding disciplines and priorities of all comprehensive universities, the Humanities are now more threatened than ever, as successive governments have, for unfathomably blinkered reasons, lost sight of why we need the Humanities.  

This makes no sense. The humanities open our minds, teach us how to think, how to formulate an argument, how to interpret, how to feel, how to be. They encapsulate the essence of what it is to be human. Society needs the humanities, so defining and determining their collective worth needs to be a collective endeavour. Our graduates are amongst the most employable, the most versatile and the most socially aware. 

For sure, we don’t ‘need’ them in the way we might ‘need’ a doctor when we’re ill; but, as King Lear railed: ‘O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars         Are in the poorest things superfluous.              Allow not nature more than nature needs,     Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s …’

Humans would be no different to animals if they existed on nothing more than life’s necessities, the abject Lear argues. The irony being, of course, that we need the humanities to understand this. 

The word ‘university’ derives from ‘universitas’ the Latin for the whole, the sum of all things. We need to hold firm to our origins and embrace all disciplines, not lose those that, as this enquiry concludes, help us to make sense of ourselves and the complexities of our world, our universe.” Professor Stella Bruzzi, Dean, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, UCL