̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

What shape will universities take in the future?

amb206 — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:03:53 +0000

Children born this year will enter university in or around 2030. ̽��ֱ��offspring of children born this year will arrive at university-age in the middle of the 21^st century. By this time, much is likely to have changed about the ways in which teaching and research take place: a greater use of technology as a tool for teaching and learning is one obvious example. Predicting what universities will look like in the coming decades requires an even greater leap of imagination: will the institutions we know today even exist in the same shape and form?

̽��ֱ��Future ̽��ֱ��, a conference taking place at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� later this week, will tackle some of the big questions surrounding the future of higher education, not simply in response to the current pressures on funding, but also in terms of the sweeping changes affecting the ways in which we live our lives. In particular, it will look at the vital role and contribution of the arts, humanities and social sciences within an environment that is in danger of dominance by an increasing emphasis on science and technology – and ask how the humanities and related disciplines are responding to the challenges and changes of the digital age.

̽��ֱ��three-day forum, generously funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, is being staged by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, and convened by CRASSH director, Professor Mary Jacobus. It is the second of two conferences looking at the way in which the humanities engage with the wider world on many different levels. This week’s conference also marks the 10^th anniversary of CRASSH as a thriving hub dedicated to the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives, not simply within Cambridge but also globally.

̽��ֱ��event will bring leading figures in academia and policy-making together with graduate and post-doctoral researchers at the start of their careers. In a series of panels, discussions and debates on a range of broad themes, they will look at the ways in which the study of the humanities engages with, and enriches, people’s lives by encouraging a creative dialogue that crosses boundaries and enhances cultural understanding. ̽��ֱ��themes embrace aspects of language, literature, archaeology, history, art history, music and more - and will be discussed from perspectives that include such pressing issues such as human rights, the need for a sustainable built environment, and the preservation of endangered languages.

“ ̽��ֱ��conference will provide a forum for conversations about topics that affect us all and represent aspects of our lives that reach far beyond the current crisis in humanities funding into the nature of our society,” said Professor Jacobus.

̽��ֱ��event’s key note speakers will be the philosopher Bernard Stiegler, Director of the Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, on “ ̽��ֱ��Pharmacology of Mind: Digital Technologies and the Conditional ̽��ֱ��”, and Sir Adam Roberts, President of the British Academy and a specialist in law and international relations, on “ ̽��ֱ��Impact of International History”. Leaders in their field, these speakers will offer perspectives that will prompt an exploration of lines of thought about the fundamental human questions underlying knowledge and education.

Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz will take part in a panel discussion on “ ̽��ֱ��Fate of the Humanities” along with the President of the Mellon Foundation, Don Randel. Other eminent speakers include Stefan Collini and Simon Schaffer ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge), Marina Warner (Essex ̽��ֱ��), Joseph Koerner (Harvard ̽��ֱ��), Richard Sennett (NYU and LSE) and Debjani Ganguli (ANU). “We hope that the contribution of these speakers will generate lively audience discussion,” said Professor Jacobus.

Discussions about the importance of music and art, and their role within the life of universities in for both theoretical and practice-based study, will be complemented by musical improvisation at the West Road Concert Hall at the end of the first day. ̽��ֱ��conference will conclude with a discussion about the role of the art museum in a university setting at the Fitzwilliam Museum featuring the Director of the Tate Museums, Sir Nicholas Serota, and the Director of the Courtauld Institute, Deborah Swallow, with the conversation chaired by Timothy Potts, director of the Museum, .

̽��ֱ��Future ̽��ֱ�� takes place from 30 June to 2 July. For details of the conference programme, including registration and booking for Improvisation in the Round at the West Road Concert Hall on 30 June and the Fitzwilliam Museum Panel Discussion on 2 July, go to http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1321/.

A conference at CRASSH later this week will address some big and highly topical questions.

̽��ֱ��conference will provide a forum for conversations about topics that affect us all and represent aspects of our lives that reach far beyond the current crisis in humanities funding.

Professor Mary Jacobus

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Writing, Sunset, Italy.

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CRASSH: convener and gateway to the humanities

lw355 — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:18:07 +0000

Now reaching the end of its first decade at Cambridge, the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) – once a fragile newcomer with a controversial moniker – has established itself as a focus for humanities activity, while its post-modern acronym has won international name-recognition.

CRASSH was conceived as a way to create interdisciplinary dialogue across the ̽��ֱ��’s many faculties and departments in the arts, social sciences and humanities. It brings together early career researchers, established faculty members and visiting scholars – for research groups, workshops, colloquia, lectures and conferences – across an array of established and emerging fields.

Indispensible to the research environment, it serves at once as a centripetal hub, drawing together different disciplinary perspectives, and as a centrifugal force for disseminating

new ideas. It provides a space for both reflection and interaction, where researchers can step beyond the frames of their disciplines.

Hunger for dialogue

As well as fostering interdisciplinarity, the Centre, with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has taken on the challenge of disciplinary innovation. Some of the most innovative work has originated in the Centre’s graduate/faculty research groups – currently spanning Endangered Languages, East European Memory Studies, GreenBRIDGE (sustainable architecture), the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Network, and the Science, Technology and Bio-Social Studies Forum.

Meanwhile long-running groups such as Cities, Post-Conflict Reconstruction and the Interdisciplinary Reproduction Forum continue to flourish, along with recent comers such as Late Antiquities, Health and Welfare, and Postcolonial Empires. Each year brings fresh proposals and new graduate cohorts.

Like the 20 or so conferences sponsored by CRASSH each year, research fora do more than challenge familiar disciplinary silos: they create collaborations from which fresh ideas and projects grow. Many of the conferences run by CRASSH – convened by early career researchers as well as established faculty – produce edited books; some form part of ongoing projects; others spearhead new initiatives and propel them forward to the next stage.

Research today involves networking, often internationally. But the term ‘network’ hardly begins to evoke the research culture engendered by face-to-face meetings and discussion. One of the discoveries made by the Centre at the outset was not just Cambridge researchers’ hunger for dialogue, but their need for a physical space where it could take place: a hospitable interdisciplinary location with common intellectual ownership.

Humanities world view

Recent CRASSH conferences have made an implicit argument for the importance of the humanities perspective and remind us how the world is changing before our eyes: forays into science like Have You Ever Seen a Molecule? Art, Science, and Visual Communication; attempts to grapple with modernity such as Understanding New Wars or Can I see your ID? Personhood and Paperwork in and after the Soviet Union; and, topical today, New Media/Alternative Politics: Communication Technologies and Political Change in the Middle East and Africa.

During 2009–10, a Mellon Sawyer seminar on Modelling Futures: Understanding Risk and Uncertainty ran throughout the year, with seminars on finance, health, environment, policy making and democracy, bringing together faculty from across the ̽��ֱ��, including the Statistical Laboratory, History and Philosophy of Science, Geography and the Cambridge Judge Business School.

This year’s Mellon-funded CRASSH conference in June, ̽��ֱ��Future ̽��ֱ��, will address urgent questions about the role of the humanities, including the arts and social sciences, in a modern technological university. ̽��ֱ��theme asks what universities are for – examining their evolving character and changing concerns in the digital age – a poignant theme at a time when cuts to university funding and fees threaten especially (but not only) the humanities.

For the Centre’s new theme kicking off at the start of the next academic year (see panel), we have selected visiting fellows from our largest ever application pool, along with new India and EUIAS fellows and two new Mellon postdoctoral fellows working on subjects relating to the theme. ̽��ֱ��generous support of the Mellon Foundation, the Newton Trust and the Charles Wallace India Trust has helped to establish CRASSH as an academic destination for researchers.

As the fellowship group grows, it becomes clearer than ever not only what our visitors gain from access to Cambridge research resources, but also how much they bring to Cambridge: the lively intellectual traffic that energises an international university.

Crystal-ball gazing

From the start, the CRASSH ethos has been strongly participatory. Even as the major research councils look for bigger and better research applications, they note the importance of the bubbling up of new ideas that lead to innovative work. CRASSH plays a part here, through competitive funding for graduate-led research groups, sponsorship of graduate-convened conferences, and Early Career Fellowships for Cambridge faculty beginning a new project. Our postdoctoral and early career fellows this year are working on projects that span terror and terrorism, complex simplicity in architecture, educational innovation and the economics of infectious diseases.

If one function of research is to keep us from forgetting the past – its achievements or its failures, its languages, histories and literary productions – another is to anticipate future concerns: energy, intergenerational justice, the environment; new forms of art, music and culture that cross media; new possibilities for peace as well as war; or new forms of human interaction, whether via digital media or ID papers.

Gateway to the humanities

̽��ֱ��vision that underpins CRASSH involves distance and engagement: both stepping outside one’s own discipline or institution, and getting together with like-minded (or unanticipated) collaborators. It aims at the indispensible combination of reflection and argument that gives rise to the best research.

Contact among opposed positions, the ability to learn from working with other people, bridging differences without conceding essential ground – these are facets of the ‘human’ face of the humanities that we teach and encourage through critical study and practice of humanities disciplines.

̽��ֱ��argument for the humanities made by CRASSH is that fresh thinking and innovation take place in the interaction between independent research and research collaboration, in the interstices of disciplines, and in the collaborative ethos and international perspective that characterise humanities research at its best. CRASSH aspires to provide this unique form of encounter: a gateway to the humanities.

For more information, please visit www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/

At CRASSH, researchers in the arts, humanities and social sciences have the opportunity to intersect, generating fresh thinking and innovation, as Director Professor Mary Jacobus explains.

̽��ֱ��vision that underpins CRASSH involves distance and engagement: both stepping outside one’s own discipline or institution, and getting together with like-minded collaborators.

Professor Mary Jacobus

andrewjstevens on flickr

Gateway

Transregional research in a transregional building

CRASSH’s next theme will be Cultures and Politics of the Transregional, responding to the need to approach ‘regionality’ from a humanities perspective.

Historically, geographical and legal borders have marked the reach of regional identities. But in an age of globalised movement, borders are constantly being crossed by the flow of travellers, by the transit of goods, by the transfer of new narratives and forms of language, and by the transmission of political and other ideas.

Flows across borders and the systems that control them are ever more large-scale and complex in character, and demand rethinking in interdisciplinary and comparative ways. With this focus in mind, Cultures and Politics of the Transregional, which runs for two years from the start of the academic year in 2011, will encompass a visiting fellowship scheme and a programme of interdisciplinary conferences, workshops and public lectures.

Fittingly, the theme coincides with a symbolic move to the ̽��ֱ��’s new humanities building at 7 West Road, where CRASSH will form part of an expanded international and cosmopolitan research community consisting of the regional studies Centres (African, Latin American, Mongolian and Inner Asian, and South Asian) and the Department of Politics and International Studies.

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