"We must double down on the values that underpin free, open and accessible academic and intellectual enquiry" - Julia Black delivers keynote speech at inaugural SHAPE Conference

President of the British Academy Professor Julia Black delivered the keynote address at the British Academy's inaugural SHAPE conference. The full speech is now available to read.

Good morning: I am delighted to welcome you to the British Academy, to our inaugural SHAPE Conference and to this brand-new space – the SHAPE Room – which we unveiled last September following a major redevelopment. And my thanks again to our generous donors, including many of our Fellows, for funding this transformative project.

I’m Julia Black, and I am proud and delighted to be President of the Academy, and have been since 2021; in fact, you catch me in my final months in the role. One of my early tasks as President was to develop the Academy’s strategy for the next five or so years. One of my core missions, shared by the Fellows and the Academy’s staff and executive team, was to ‘open up’ the Academy. The creation of these wonderful new spaces was, and is, integral to that achieving that aim.

But whilst the aim of opening up is, yes, to bring more people in to this incredible building, and indeed to our digital world; it is also, and most importantly, to reach out: to increase our ability to facilitate dialogue and to exchange ideas, insights and research with researchers at all stages of their careers, with policymakers and with curious minds the world over. So, the conversation may start here, but we seek to bring in as many participants and voices as possible.

We also took the opportunity in our most recent strategy to restate the values which underpin all that we do, and we stand for: integrity, diversity, creativity, rigour and, importantly for today, collaboration.

Because we may be the British Academy, but research and the pursuit of knowledge is, and must be, a collective and a global endeavour. As we know, the most pressing problems facing the world today are global, complex and interconnected, and addressing them requires international collaboration and the mutual sharing of knowledge, insights and ideas. Over the last decades, researchers have developed deep and extensive networks of collaboration. The economy, trade, defence, security, the environment, education, new technologies, migration, are just a few of the issues that require a worldwide conversation, and, ideally, global cooperation.

However, we are seeing that the values of open inquiry, of open engagement and of open collaboration are facing a level of threat unknown, at least in the West, in the post war period. And unfortunately, we are finding that the channels of collaboration are also channels which can enable the impacts of policies we may not agree with to spread quickly too – networks are a dual use technology. We have to recognise that the norms of academic freedom of inquiry are not universally held or observed: The latest Academic Freedom Index, published a few weeks ago, provides a stark reminder that almost half of the global population live in countries without academic freedom. So, while ideological assaults on academia of the kind we are seeing may be shocking, disturbing, and chilling, they are sadly not isolated, and they are not new.

So, what can we do as the British Academy and as a community of scholars to maintain what my predecessor, Sir David Cannadine, has called our ‘global republic of letters’ and to promote and protect our values?

I am going to focus on five things.

First and foremost, we must work together, and that is what we are doing today. Collaboration is key and events such as this provide opportunities to engage. Because what is needed now is to connect, to cooperate and to collaborate – across disciplines, across institutions, across countries, working with all those who share our values.

I believe our actions now are critical in exemplifying and delivering on our values for knowledge and for people. This is not the moment to freeze, to stand still or, even worse, to retreat. We need to advance, pushing forward with purpose and doubling down on the values that underpin free, open and accessible academic and intellectual enquiry.

We want more, not less, global mobility of scholars and of students.

We want more, not less, collaboration which crosses borders.

We want more, not less, exchange of ideas between people, disciplines, and institutions.

We want more, not less, access to education.

We want more, not less, freedom to pursue knowledge and express ideas.

At the British Academy we are doing all that we can to uphold our values and support the very activities we want to see. The Academy I am proud to lead engages in actions, not just words, to give meaningful and practical support for our scholars and academics across the humanities and social sciences. Let me provide some concrete examples.

As I said, research is by its very nature a national and international endeavour. It requires the free and flowing exchange of people and ideas across borders. Along with others we fought hard for the UK to remain associated to Horizon Europe after Brexit and are now running pump priming sessions for UK academics in all disciplines to support their applications. We also worked to create the Researchers at Risk scheme, by design open to researchers at risk in any country, and funding was provided by the UK government and others to support over 170 Ukrainian researchers to come to the UK over the last three years.

Through the funding we provide ourselves, we support international collaborations and the mobility of scholars between the UK and many other parts of the world. This year the upcoming call will focus on transnational and planetary challenges, in particular emerging technologies, earth system governance and global health.

Much of the funding for our international programmes comes from the UK Government, but we also actively seek partners who share our values to support that work. Just in January, we launched a very timely collaboration with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace – a new, multiyear initiative on Global (Dis)Order. Its purpose is to shed light on the dynamics of global turbulence and identify effective policy responses that will promote a more secure, prosperous, equitable, resilient, and sustainable future for humanity.

We also offer opportunities for academics to cross boundaries to build their research careers beyond academia through our Global Innovation Fellowships, delivered with a range of partners including the South African Institute of International Affairs, C40 Cities, the German Council on Foreign Relations and the International Crisis Group. We held the first international conference on Equitable Partnership in International Collaboration earlier this year.

And we continue to support British International Research Institutes in strategic locations across the world from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We host regular Global Perspectives events series, which recently featured Homi Bhabha discussing “How to Disagree?” and an in conversation with Professor Joel Mwaura Ngugi - Judge of the Court of Appeal in Kenya on “Judiciaries Under Pressure.”

These are some of the spaces and opportunities we are creating for more global conversation. We want to do all we can to keep our international collaborations, conversations and connections alive and well, and support you to do the same to keep the global conversations going.

The second thing we need to do to protect and promote our values is to nurture and support the next generation of scholars, for it is on them that the future of scholarship depends. This is why we created and have been investing heavily in our Early Career Researcher Network. The network began as a pilot in 2021 in just three regions, and in just over 3 years we have grown it to be supporting nearly 6000 early career researchers across the whole of the UK, with our final roll out in the South East of England still to come. We have been astonished, indeed overwhelmed, by the engagement from the early career researchers, and by the support and collaboration we have from our regional partner institutions. The support we provide is very much guided by the needs of the researchers, and through our online platform they can access a range of activities including training, panels and workshops, and connect and collaborate with one another and with others inside and outside academia.

In the funding we provide directly, we have also deliberately prioritised supporting individual scholars to pursue discovery research, both through our small grants scheme and through our fellowship funding. We have focused our fellowship funding on early career researchers, whilst also providing support for those at that critical mid-career and more senior levels. Whilst we do target some of our funding at particular themes, we strongly believe that we will best support the pursuit of knowledge and understanding by funding talented and curious people to pursue new questions and exciting ideas, alone or in collaboration with others.

The third area we need to focus on to promote and protect our values is to engage with others outside academia openly and constructively - learning from them, sharing our knowledge with them and jointly producing new insights and understandings. Our new event spaces are enabling the Academy to develop our own exciting programme of public events, both in person and online. I know we have people here from the galleries, libraries and museums – the rather wonderfully named GLAM sector. You have had long experience in engaging different publics; we are looking forward to learning from you, and not just today.

But we can be very ‘supply driven’ as academics, seeing ourselves as the main ‘content providers’. I think we need to do more to recognise the work of others who are outside academia but who are actively seeking, as we are, to stand up for research integrity and for the pursuit of knowledge. In particular I think we need to do more to stand with those who stand against misinformation and disinformation. That is why in my time as President I was proud and delighted to award the President’s Medal in 2022 to Full Fact, a charitable organisation dedicated to correcting misinformation in the media.

We will continue to support the pursuit of knowledge, and to engage with others inside and outside academia in that pursuit, for as long as we are able. Because by persisting, by upholding the values we share and working with others who share those values we can hope to make lasting impact and demonstrate the collective power of the ‘global republic of letters’.

But, as we know, we are pushing against some strong opposing forces, and doing so requires energy and it requires resources – neither of which can be assumed. I do not need to tell you that this is a particularly challenging time financially for all of us in the UK, with our own higher education system under significant financial strain, and with many of the subject areas within SHAPE bearing the brunt of the cuts which are being made across the sector.

This brings me to the fourth area where we need to work, and that is to ensure the financial sustainability of the UK’s higher education, research and innovation system. We all know that there are multiple pressures on the public purse. In my letter to the Chancellor a few weeks ago, I acknowledged the pressure on public finances. But I argued, and continue to argue, that a thriving higher education system in the UK can fuel growth and prosperity; producing the research that helps frame our response to the world’s greatest challenges, shaping and upskilling the future workforce and incubating the innovations that will transform our world.

A failure to address the sustainability of our higher education system will have short and long-term consequences. Universities add considerably to our society, by some calculations adding £265bn a year to the UK economy and supporting more than 760,000 jobs – 2.8 per cent of all those in the UK. In a ‘university town’, that number can be even greater; universities in the North West of England contribute £10.4bn to the regional economy.

But we know that the sector is under significant strain, and one which has been building for some time. Our SHAPE Observatory provides data-driven tools to monitor changes to all SHAPE subjects and put them in context. Mapping what students are studying and where helps us understand what impact a decade of major change has had to our universities and to student access to SHAPE subjects. Our cold spots maps are showing in stark, graphic form where gaps in provision are emerging regionally – limiting access and dismantling knowledge, expertise and infrastructure. This bird’s eye view is important and is what is lacking from our policymakers and regulators. This is a systems issue, reflective of deeper structural changes, and doesn’t just affect SHAPE.

When financial pressures force universities to make tough choices, students suffer. Staff suffer. Communities suffer. Subjects which are expensive to teach, which have less certain short-term returns, or which require specialist experience or equipment often bear the brunt. This affects both STEM and SHAPE disciplines, from modern languages and music to chemistry and nursing. And when a cold spot emerges in one discipline, it disrupts the wider system of knowledge, research and skills that our economy and society rely on. This has far reaching impacts on students – when you learn more you earn more, and cold spots in provision mean those who cannot afford to move from home to study are shut out from opportunity.

In our manifesto, published before last year’s General Election, we called for an urgent review of higher education funding to deliver a sustainable model that delivers a wide breadth of subjects and is resilient to regional inequalities in provision. That call continues to gain in urgency, and we continue to press it with urgency, and with other voices in the sector such as Universities UK, sector mission groups, and learned societies. We need a coherent policy across government on teaching, research, on immigration and on security, which recognises that the key to the strength of our universities is their international character. We need to ensure that our research and higher education system remains ‘responsibly open’ to the world - openness driven by our community.

But it is difficult to know with which part of Government, or indeed with which government within the UK, to have this conversation. Education is a devolved matter, and the curriculum changes in all four nations are impacting student subject choices at university, as is the wider political narrative on the relative value of different degrees. As for research, some funding is devolved, but the bulk of research funding comes from the UK Government, through DSIT. Meanwhile student fees in England are set by the Treasury and in the devolved nations by their governments, whilst it is the Home Office which sets immigration policy for all students entering the UK. As for security and issues of trusted research, that too is disseminated. In short, no one part of any government within the UK seems to want to recognise the collective impact their decisions are having on universities, or to take responsibility for it.

We need an immediate review and thorough review and overhaul of the way governments across the UK engage with universities, and which recognises that research, teaching and public engagement are integral parts of the same scholarly endeavour, and that they all produce significant public benefits to our society and economy, and to the UK’s place in the world.

But we need to have some difficult conversations. Universities are independent organisations, and they are right to demand autonomy in how they run themselves. However, while universities are independent, their impact is not. They are not independent of the communities they serve or the country as a whole. Decisions which it may be rational for one university to make may not, in aggregate, be producing outcomes which are beneficial for the country at large.

I have argued that government needs to see our university sector as a system, but how much ‘system management’ does government want to do? And do universities, who are rightly protective of their autonomy, really want the government to be a ‘system manager’, and what would that look like? Does the sector want a return to student number controls? Does it want government to say which subjects should be taught where? To what extent do universities want to collaborate, and in what ways, and how can our current systems of be restructured to enable that? Given the UK’s fiscal environment, how can adequate funding for research and for education be secured? We all know the problems – it is beholden on the sector to step up to become collective authors of the solutions, to create their own collective identity and not wait for someone else to do that for them. Part of what we are asking you to do today is to find some answers, to create new ideas about how to secure the future of our research and higher education system, given the financial situation the UK faces. This afternoon, you'll be joining workshops where we want you to do some blue-sky, big-picture thinking on some really difficult questions, as we come into a pivotal summer for UK higher education. And we are looking for solutions; we are not here just to restate or admire the problems.

There is a huge opportunity to be seized here. Research and innovation are increasingly moving to the forefront in many countries’ policymaking apparatuses and aspirations. They are central to other countries’ efforts to deliver aims linked to foreign policy, national security, resilience and economic stability. As the Inter-American Network of Academics of Science has said: science is not an expense but an investment. And in the face of the wider geopolitical turmoil and assaults that I have mentioned, it would be a smart one – filling an ever-increasing void, and giving us a genuine opportunity to position ourselves with comparative strategic advantage.

In order to maintain our current research base, let alone enhance it, we need to work with others, including others who are willing to invest in research and innovation alongside us, whether they be businesses, NGOs, philanthropists, or others, in the UK or elsewhere. But before others will invest their time, their knowledge, and their funding, they need to trust us to be reliable partners and collaborators. As we have seen, short term decisions to cut funding from long term programmes can do significant damage to our reputation as a trustworthy partner. So as a country if we want to strengthen our higher education, research and innovation base, we have both the opportunity and the imperative to demonstrate our trustworthiness as partners by securing the financial resilience of our research and higher education sector, and by reaffirming our commitment to freedom of inquiry, to the highest standards of research integrity, and to ‘responsible openness’.

The fifth and final area I will focus on today will come as no surprise: it is that we need to protect and promote the SHAPE disciplines. As political systems move away from plurality, it is our subjects which can be the most threatening, and the most threatened, as many of them are critical to a thriving liberal democracy. It is no coincidence that autocratic regimes seek either to repress or take control of history, literature or the arts – they are the cultural lifeblood of societies, and often uncomfortable sources of critique.

This audience doesn’t need convincing of the importance of SHAPE subjects. But others do. SHAPE subjects have an intrinsic value – it is important in and of itself to understand history, to study literature or poetry, to create and engage with art or music, to understand societies, economies, political or legal systems, to explore fundamental questions about ethics, about our relationships with people and with the planet on which we live. But reluctant though I know some are to engage in instrumental arguments, we cannot assume that all will share our appreciation of the intrinsic value of our subjects – we have to be able to communicate why and how they are beneficial to individuals and to societies more widely

Take languages as just one example. It is often said, rightly, that languages are a window into a culture and a society – we cannot fully understand others without understanding the language that they speak. There is huge intrinsic value to studying languages. But languages are also strategically vital for the future of the UK and for its connectedness. They are important for diplomacy, furthering international partnerships, and leading alliances, as well as for business and trade, social cohesion and cultural understanding. And they’re important for research.

However, the UK is not fulfilling its linguistic potential, and language skills are being actively eroded with effects for education, business and government. Language learning continues to decline, provision in schools and at post-16 is decreasing, and university language departments face cuts which affect the pipeline of language teachers and the supply of much-needed linguists, including those speaking strategically important languages. Together with partners, including the British Council, the British Academy has made the case for a joined-up, UK-wide languages strategy, with concrete recommendations for short, medium and long-term actions aimed at improving language education and skills from primary level to further and higher education and thus restoring and reinvigorating the languages education pipeline.

As the national academy for humanities and social sciences, you would expect me to focus on their importance. But the theme of today is collaboration, and we know that some of the most exciting and innovative research comes from those working and collaborating across disciplines. Indeed, one of the distinguishing features of the UK research and higher education system is that we are strong across all the major disciplinary groups. Moreover, analysis we commissioned on the impact case studies from the last REF revealed that those in the humanities were the most collaborative of all the disciplines, and that humanities researchers can be found working across the life, physical and social sciences. In addition, recently published research supported by the Academy shows that one of the strengths of the UK is the international connectedness of its research base, a connectedness which is deeply rooted in the SHAPE disciplines. This connectedness itself is fundamentally strategic advantage.

So, whilst we rightly emphasise the importance of the SHAPE disciplines, we do not fight for one set of disciplines or indeed one institution over another. SHAPE and STEM must stand together, as connected knowledge, to ensure a future for ourselves and for our planet where all can thrive. The British Academy is one of four National Academies – your favourite of course, and by far the best building – but it is with our sister Academies and our devolved counterparts, and indeed with our counterparts internationally, that we find solace and strength.

When I became President of the Academy back in July 2020, I declared the 2020s as the decade when the humanities and social sciences will reassert themselves on the national, and the global, stage. However, in true scholarly tradition, I now wish to refine my argument!

The relevance and importance of SHAPE subjects, and our visibility and presence, extends far beyond any single decade. Our visibility and influence on the global stage must endure and grow, not tied to a specific time frame, but as a continuous force shaping the future. So the conversation starts here: let’s get going!

Thank you.

Image: Greg Allen