Opinion
For centuries, philosophers and faith traditions have wrestled with the question of what enables people and communities to live well.
As Pope Leo has noted, “Authentic human flourishing stems from the full development of a person in all dimensions: physical, social, cultural, moral, and spiritual.”
Human flourishing isn’t a single measure, it is a framework that offers universities a new way to organise major aspects of their research, centred on integrated outcomes rather than disciplines.
The social sciences and humanities all have an essential contribution to make within a rounded flourishing framework that partners with the sciences and community.
The question becomes how they work together in pursuit of a shared purpose. And that shift has important consequences for how we think about research impact.
If research exists to serve society, then impact can’t be defined only by academic influence and outputs. We also need to ask what has changed because the research was done, and for who. Did it improve health? Expand education opportunities? Strengthen communities? Help people ethically navigate technological change? Those are the outcomes that further build universities’ social license and justify public investment in translatable research.
The universities that thrive over the next decade will recognise this. Their advantage will come from connecting expertise, building genuine partnerships beyond academia and creating environments where collaboration and co-design is rewarded.
In my experience working internationally across universities, government and industry, the most significant breakthroughs have shared one thing in common.
They emerged when people with different expertise tackled the same problem together. The collective capacity to connect ideas, communities, organisations and disciplines has proved perhaps more valuable than depth in any one field alone.
It requires moving beyond the false competition between STEMM, the humanities and the social sciences. Every major challenge facing society draws on multiple ways of understanding the world. Preparing Australians for the AI age requires advances in computer science alongside insights from ethics, law, education, philosophy and the social sciences. Educational equity depends as much on psychology, economics and public policy as it does on classroom practice.
For mission-led universities, this reflects our reason for being. At ACU, it has shaped our research strategy, In service of a flourishing humanity, which reflects a commitment to tackling society's pressing challenges through people-centred partnerships that cross disciplines, sectors and national borders.
Our emerging initiatives reflect this approach. The Indonesia–Australia Human Flourishing Centre under development at ACU with Universitas Gadjah Mada reflects a belief that solutions to complex human challenges are built on international collaboration alongside deep local understanding.
Through joint research, doctoral education and community-centred partnerships, this initiative aims to create new knowledge, and develop researchers who can work across cultures, disciplines and sectors to create practical impact.
The ambition is practical as well as academic: to create research that can improve lives.
That doesn't mean every research project needs to achieve a practical outcome within a set timeframe. In fact, some of the discoveries that have changed our lives the most didn't look immediately useful. They started with someone asking a question or following an idea. The impact only became clear much later.
That's why human flourishing matters. It asks us to think beyond the next funding round or election cycle and focus on the kind of society we're trying to build. Research that tackles today's problems is essential. So is the research that lays the groundwork for tomorrow's breakthroughs, even if we can't yet see where they'll lead.
If we want research to genuinely improve lives, we need to back the discoveries we can see coming and the ones we can't and engage our work constantly within a societal dialogue. That's how societies flourish.
Universities will always produce knowledge. The most important question is whether that knowledge leaves society stronger, fairer and better equipped for the future. That is the standard by which research should ultimately be judged.
Professor Abid Khan is the DVC (Research and Enterprise) at Australian Catholic University.