Questions around the value of the arts and humanities to the contemporary world and the benefits they are expected to bring to the society that supports them through funding have assumed an increased centrality within a number of disciplines, not limited to humanities scholarship. Especially problematic, yet crucial, is the issue of the…

This article argues that innovation may constitute a useful perspective on the link between society and arts and humanities research. Innovation is here seen as "something new put into practical use", and there are two reasons why it can be relevant for humanities. First, there has been an expansion of what innovation refers to; it is…

No matter what the national context, the question of how to understand the impact of government programmes, particularly in terms of value for money, has emerged as a complex problem to be solved by social scientific management. This article engages with these trends in two ways. It focuses on the UK to understand how these tools and technologies…

The severity of the global economic crisis has put the spotlight firmly on measuring academic and research performance and productivity and assessing its contribution, value, impact and benefit. While, traditionally, research output and impact were measured by peer-publications and citations, there is increased emphasis on a "market-driven…

What does it mean to find echoes of an innovatory moment in the past, or a discipline's cutting edge in another's worn down tool, or people in different fields quite unknown to one another following a similar intellectual trajectory over the same three or four years? A short case study of what looks uncannily like "independent…

If there is a topic on which the humanities might make a distinctive claim, it is that of consciousness--an essential aspect of human being. And within the humanities, music might make its own claims in relation to both consciousness and being human. To investigate this connection, David Clarke and Eric Clarke brought together a wide variety of…

In light of recent attempts to defend the role of the arts in education against the effects of policies based on utilitarian principles, this paper examines the arts educational writings and practical projects of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) at Santiniketan in West Bengal, showing how they were motivated by a Romantic and Upanishadic philosophy…

The rationale for retaining the humanities in universities in the 21st century is not self-evident. A case for the humanities can only be fully made against a sense of their loss or their absence. Some say that we are already in a post-human society, but what role might the humanities play in such a society? Presumably, the fate of the humanities…

Critical responses to changes in UK higher education have emerged from various quarters. This article suggests that some of these responses are collusive with neo-liberalism and that a greater attention might be paid to the possibilities of the word "liberal" and to the more democratic implications of certain US initiatives.

Seamus Heaney talked of poetry's responsibility to represent the "bloody miracle", the "terrible beauty" of atrocity; to create "something adequate". This article asks, what is adequate to the burning and eating of a nun and the murderous gang rape and evisceration of a medical student? It considers Njabulo…

Starting with an art exhibition which explored issues of religious identity, and with an illuminative case study of a "British Muslim" artist, this paper sets out a two-fold impact of approaching religious subjects from the angle of aesthetics. Firstly, the arts can be employed to open out categories of religious identity as non-fixed…

Seamus Heaney (like Stimpson and Parker in this issue) speaks of: "A historic dialectic [which] exists between the beautiful and the bestial". In this speech, delivered on 13 December 2012, Njabulo Ndebele reflects on the stories South Africa tells itself about past atrocity, as a way of achieving "the future we have desired".…

This article introduces a novel approach to pedagogy within an art school in the UK HE sector, based upon a synthesis of perception theory and communication theory. It is argued that art students' drawing is empowered by strategies of teaching informed by aspects of James J. Gibson's ecological approach to visual perception relevant to…

This paper examines the dynamic interplay between practice and theory in practice-led research in the visual arts. Building on recent debate around the issue and following appropriately rigorous models, the importance of locating a suitable methodology to adequately reflect the integrated process of research practice in written as well as visual…

This article reflects critically on "The Social Dynamics of Art Research: Contemporary Photography in Belfast", an engaged research project conducted with photographers, community activists, academics and visual artists in Belfast. Through a critical examination of the project's theoretical architecture and methodological framework…