Presidential Address by Susan J Smith, 2026

It's a pleasure to see so many people here at Carlton House Terrace for this 123rd Annual General Meeting of the British Academy. It is also good to know that so many more are with us online, not least because this is the first real chance I have had publicly, and formally, to thank you in person for electing me as your President.

It is an honour and a privilege to hold this Office. I hope there will be a glimpse today of why that is, as we reflect on a direction of travel inspired by your very engaged Council, nine energetic vice presidents, and a highly focussed Senior Management Team whose hard work is what keeps our Academy in the fast lane.

In the old days the President would, at this point, offer a round up of the past year. Now, however, that challenge quite rightly falls to our CEO as we embrace the fact that we are major UK charity, with the important divisions of labour that implies.

The President’s address has thereby become a more wide ranging 'state of the union' affair. This is perhaps an unfortunate analogy for the present time, though I promise not exceed the one hour, 47 minutes and 40 seconds, which I believe is the current record. My address is, though, a horizon scanning exercise, at a time when that horizon is barely visible for the gathering clouds.

We reflected on some of those clouds at AGM fringe, wracking our brains about what we can do to safeguard our subjects when over three quarters of UK universities are pursuing voluntary redundancies, nearly a third are cutting research activities, and just under half have reduced their course offerings and/or closed key courses in the past three years. You will have also seen our latest reports on all this from the SHAPE Observatory in yesterday's newsfeeds.

Unfortunately, that is not all that is worrying us. Financial risk, political instability, technological change (of which AI is just one element), environmental sustainability and more, have been uppermost in the minds of our Trustees. That is why my horizon-scanning remarks today are really their project. Our Council has embarked on a new round of strategic planning.

Indeed there is a profusion of strategic initiatives ahead, in which we will use our 125th anniversary (in 2027), to launch a new strategic plan, a refreshed communications strategy and an ambitious fundraising campaign.

In nudging all this forward, whilst taking great care to balance continuity with change – enduring values, with a sense of momentum – the Council’s two pre-occupations have been, first, how to protect the Academy against any oncoming political, financial, environmental or technological storm, and second, how to grasp victory from, or at least find the silver lining in, an uncertain future.

Turning to the first concern, to shore up our foundations against volatile times a few things are in train. I’ll mention three.

First, we are tackling an issue that every Fellow confronts on the day their election is announced: not many people know who we are! If you are lucky, they will think you’ve joined an art gallery… So, under the leadership of our new Director of Communications we are consulting with the creative and communications agency Shape History, who are working with us to strengthen the identity and improve the visibility of the Academy. The idea is to better articulate who we are and why we matter, and to reach out to our stakeholders with a clearer more confident voice. We need more ‘stage presence’ if we are going to succeed as advocates for our subjects and architects of their future.

Shape History (whose name is a co-incidence) have already come up with a strapline, ‘For the questions of our time’ which is landing well. If you hate it, I’m sure I’ll hear from you. (But of course, this is merely a teaser; there is plenty more to come).

Second, as the Academy moves towards its 125th Anniversary, a priority is to support and engage the fellowship. We are the academy’s underpinning and one of its greatest assets. The scholarly range, excellence and expertise the Fellowships brings is the USP of the Academy’s entire portfolio of activity. Whether conducting or reviewing cutting edge research, publishing or publicizing new findings, mentoring the next generation, leading dialogue around pressing questions, informing the policy agenda, driving public engagement, or (like me) getting mired in the machinations of governance, the Fellows represent the independence, ingenuity and integrity, and build the trust, and that is at the heart of a national Academy.

The future of the Fellowship is therefore key to the future of the Academy. There may not be enough of us to unlock the Academy’s full potential, and that, as you know, is under active consideration in a Council working group. In the meantime, we now have our own Directorate, shared with Development; a newly appointed head (from September); and Lucia Simms who replaces Marion Paterson as our first point of contact. So we can look forward to more events under the ‘for fellows, by fellows’ badge (there were 28 last year), as well as more opportunities to support the Academy’s policy work, profile your own research, engage with the development team, and nurture the next generation. And let’s not forget the Fellows’ seminar series that is open to us all, thanks to the sterling efforts of MM McCabe, Simon Shepherd and Sarah Worthington.

Third, the bottom line. You will hear more about our current financial position later. It is robust, but over-reliant on a single government funding stream. This could soon prove incompatible with our claims to independence, and it certainly feels precarious in the present political climate. Our Council is taking steps to address this. One important decision has been to make a substantial investment into the Development effort. Some may see this as a marmite move. However, it will play a key role in sustaining our current financial model, which is rooted in our turnover as a research funding body. There are also plans to create a new (expendable) endowment, thereby potentially – in the longer run – creating a substantial additional income stream. This is a very exciting, perhaps even game changing, step for the Academy; it demands courage, determination and hard work. I hope we will all get behind it.

So much for being buffeted by the wind. Much more exciting are our plans to change it’s course. Part of that is standing firm, of course. Preserving core values, cementing our reputation as a trustworthy, independent source of expert knowledge, building on big wins from past ambition. The other part is about writing the next chapters of an already-gripping story. A forward looking institution needs a sense of direction. Here are three trajectories that the Council is considering.

First we could extend our success in opening up the Academy, by reaching out to stakeholders – policy-makers, decision-takers, influencers – to enlarge the Academy’s sphere of influence. That will help us connect with a wider community of scholars and experts who share our values and ambition, and can join our Campaign for SHAPE. The ECRN is one example, a pdf alumni group is also on the cards, maybe we can do more for scholars at risk, perhaps we should consider policy associates, or artists in residence? Council has a limited life working group looking into all this, so watch this space.

Second, we have made great strides in the past few years in mobilising our disciplines to address the questions of our time, but we can’t do this on our own, so we are looking to collaborate more actively with those who share our vision, and who recognise, with us, that all the world’s important questions demand insights and inspiration from the Humanities and Social Sciences. This may include developing, badging up, perhaps leading the field, with our convening activities, whose impact some say we underplay. It will certainly be about building new partnerships with philanthropists and others to enlarge and diversify our portfolio of cross-career research grant funding activity. (That, of course, will be one of the big wins from our new development effort).

The third direction of travel has to do with actively shaping the future for and with our subjects. Concerning the future for our subjects, we have built a unique observatory, enabling us to be leading advocates for the future of higher education and research. If you were at AGM fringe you will know that our research and higher education policy committee and team, with VP Professor Margot Finn, are leaning squarely into that, and you can expect to hear a lot more from them going forward. We could also be described as a policy laboratory, bringing our subjects actively to bear on challenging problems through our public and international policy brief. Perhaps under this shaping the future theme we might also, as befits the A in SHAPE, think more broadly about the extent to which we are a platform for the wide-ranging influence of subjects that do not connect readily with the policy agenda but nevertheless powerfully infuse and animate the way the world works.

In short, underpinned by excellence, inspired by the humanities and social sciences, rooted in enduring values, we are talking about a future in which the British Academy will be more actively campaigning for, and community-building around, our subjects; collaborating to illuminate and investigate the pressing questions of our time; and imagining, perhaps enacting, a better world. These, at any rate, are some of the dots I see on a horizon that is fast approaching.

In the meantime, please take all the opportunities that remain to get your thoughts into the mix, and keep your diaries at the ready. On December 17th this year, it will be 125 years to the day that the ‘proposed Fellows of the British Academy’ met for the first time. We will certainly mark that occasion. It is perhaps surprising that the Royal Society declined to encompass us, and annoying that we were the last European Country to grant a charter to an Academy for our subjects. It is mildly irritating, too, that it took over 20 years for us to secure an annual Treasury grant, though at least we got used to the struggle early on.

Yet, our anniversary and all that flows from it will be less about the challenges of the past, and more about looking forwards. Unsettling though the future may seem, the one thing I can say with certainty, one year in to my tenure as your 32nd President, is that the British Academy will be approaching that future firmly on the front foot. My thanks to everyone who is making that possible.

Susan J. Smith

President

16 July 2026