Communicating Culture

This article by Alain De Botton in a number of ways sets out one of the most pressing problems with contemporary academic discourse, particularly as it pertains to the humanities. He highlights the outcry against funding cuts in Universities' teaching budgets, yet also points out that

"right now, at this difficult moment in the history of British universities, there is a need to acknowledge that at least some of the woes that have befallen academics is squarely their own fault. To put it at its simplest, academics in the humanities have failed to explain why what they do should matter so much. They've failed to explain to the government, but this really only means "us" - the public at large."

Don't misunderstand me. The swathing cuts to the arts and humanities, when combined with the insane tuition fee increases will have worrying consequences, not least with regards to access and widening participation. The desire to study a degree with a job or employment sector in its title is going to be even more fuelled, especially if you happen to be from a background with no real history or experience of the UK's diverse higher education sector.

But de Botton does raise an extremely valid point about university-level research being far too remote from the concerns of the wider public. There needs to be a fine line between popularising and explaining research to a wider audience and not compromising academic rigour. But at least part of the answer to this problem is investing time in working out exactly how to communicate our research activities more widely. Academics within the humanities are doing a tremendous job of investigating how we have lived, interracted and expressed ourselves across a huge span of human history and geography. Perhaps if we were better at letting people know that, then the devastating cuts to humanities teaching and research would be even more difficult to justify.