Academia Europaea position paper on the situation of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe

The AE argue that there is mounting evidence of a serious erosion in critical and core underpinning subjects in our European Humanities and Social Sciences activity. If unrecognised, this trend risks degrading research expertise and could, over time, seriously undermine future scholarship capacity in the Humanities and Social Sciences in our collective European University and Higher Education system. There is also mounting perception that Humanities and Social Science research is regarded (in some quarters) as less relevant when compared to other fields, with the concomitant risk to maintain

The AE argue that there is mounting evidence of a serious erosion in critical and core underpinning subjects in our European Humanities and Social Sciences activity. If unrecognised, this trend risks degrading research expertise and could, over time, seriously undermine future scholarship capacity in the Humanities and Social Sciences in our collective European University and Higher Education system. There is also mounting perception that Humanities and Social Science research is regarded (in some quarters) as less relevant when compared to other fields, with the concomitant risk to maintaining of a level of adequate funding that might otherwise be expected through future European Commission research funding programmes.

The institutional rush toward the funding (in both national institutions and from Europe) of only those activities that have a direct “marketable” outcome or a short-term financial relevance is perhaps understandable in the present climate, but such a sustained pressure will put at risk the longer-term research and scholarship capacity of Europe and potentially lessen our traditional world position and global impact in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

The Academia Europaea paper makes a number of recommendations for action that are applicable to the upcoming negotiations on the next EU Framework Research programme and relevant to the European Commission 2020 strategy.

The full document can be accessed via the home page of the AE website at www.acadeuro.org. It follows this release.

The AE Board contact point for further information about the statement is Professor Theo D’Haen University of Leuven, Belgium [[e-mail]] Contact [phone] (home) and [phone] (mobile) and [phone] (office)

Kraje

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom