Humanities disciplines have been all but ignored in the nation's new R&D blueprint – but their advocates are doing their best not to be perceived as irrelevant.
The Strategic Review of Research and Development acknowledges “the importance of protecting foundational research” in the humanities and social science,s pointing to the need for a workforce with broad skill-sets – but that is just about as far as it goes.
It is not much to work with, but their lobbies worked with what they were not given; congratulating SERD on its ambition and explaining why their disciplines matter.
“New technologies succeed only when they are understood, trusted, governed and adopted by societies – areas where humanities scholarship provides critical expertise,” Australian Academy of the Humanities president, Stephen Garton (Uni Sydney) said on Tuesday.
“Australia’s social and cultural capabilities — alongside our scientific technical strengths — must be recognised and deployed across the RD&I system if we are to realise the full potential of the SERD reform,” he added.
He won’t get an argument out of SERD supporters, perhaps not because they agree, but because they are not interested in research that cannot lead to development and on to investment.
The Australian Research Council, for example, is barely mentioned in SERD, and then, only with a recommendation that it “balance support” for national R&D priorities, “while preserving support for independent research that drives discovery across a broad range of STEM and HASS disciplines.” The same advice applies to the National Health and Medical Research Council but there is more concern about funding and resources for its researchers.
The ARC appears to have seen something like SERD coming a year back when it started a programme restructure, including ending distinctions between pure basic, strategic basic and applied research in Discovery and Linkage programmes.
“If Australia wants an innovation system that works in the real world, humanities expertise must be at the decision-making table,” Professor Garton warned yesterday.
On the SERD case so far, it is a case that will take some making.