Effects of New Governance on Research in the Humanities – The Example of Medieval History

Abstract

The first section in the chapter presents the main lines of the discussion on the role of the humanities in the current research landscape and discusses the common assumptions which claim that new governance approaches put research in the humanities at a disadvantage and that they lead to their gradual reduction or cut back. The second section draws on longitudinal statistical data to verify whether the quota of external research funds in the humanities has decreased and whether the number of research posts was reduced. This analysis is conducted comparatively for four countries (D, A, NL, UK). As a case study of a specific subject within the humanities, the third section presents findings from interviews with researchers in medieval history. The interviews were conducted in the four countries mentioned above and focused on the question whether and how far new university management/governance approaches within universities affect the actual research activities of individual historians and how the researchers perceive the changes in their institutional environment. The concluding section discusses whether university management can really determine research activities in a top-down manner, which strategies of avoidance or adaptation researchers possibly develop and if perhaps supranational (EU) research policies and rationales play a role for the researchers’ strategies.

An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9139-0_7