Interdisciplinarity across the Humanities Institutional Relationships Stuart Taberner (Leeds Humanities Research Institute)

The LHRI at Leeds Set up 5 years ago to promote interdisciplinary research and grant-capture Run by a Director and the Faculty Research manager, with staff for pre-award and post- award support Funded by ADF in the first instance, subsequently by ‘poll tax’ on schools (English, History, SMLC, Humanities and IMS Housed in Victorian terrace, with seminar rooms, co-housed with Graduate School

Development Primary emphasis in earlier years, and to a large extent in the present, on grant-capture Runs training workshops, provides substantial advice to individuals, does costings, and processes applications Great deal of success: 161 applications in August 2008 – February 2009 with an external value of £8.62m (and an fEC value of £13.15m) compared with 92 applications in the similar period last year (then worth an external value of £5.53m and an fEC value of £7.79m).

Role in the Faculty To promote grant-capture; requires use of ‘soft power’ and persuasion Provide management information to schools on grant capture To provide intelligence on changes in the research grant environment To encourage coordination between schools and research, particularly at the level of research strategy To input into Faculty research strategy

What gets left behind… Because of emphasis on grant-capture (importance for budgets, also importance of changing culture), fostering interdisciplinary activity becomes a rather secondary activity We are trying to address this via: 1. pumppriming; 2. Director’s input into research management of interdisciplinary institutes and groups However, there are significant institutional obstacles to developing this activity significantly…

Obstacles to Interdisciplinary Activity – The Faculty Organisation of the Faculty – schools with their own workload models and their own budgets Funding – who should fund interdisciplinary activity which may not benefit any particular school; how should grants awarded interdisciplinary groups be channelled to school budgets? Structures and incentives – work done ‘outside’ of School may go ‘unnoticed’ and not be rewarded via promotions Culture – culture rooted in disciplines; many colleagues don’t see their work as interdisciplinary; or as so interdisciplinary that they don’t see need for interdisciplinary structures

University Obstacles Obstacles abound within the Faculty – even more so across the University PVAC (Performance, Visual and Cultural Industries) – many of our ‘natural’ partners in a different Faculty Opportunities to meet and work with people in wider University (Medicine, for example, which might appeal to Philosophers in HPS), hampered by problems of scale – Medics looking at multi-million £ opportunities which we find it hard to scale up to University ‘pass-through’ model compounds problem of ‘School budgets’ – individuals may participate in interdisciplinary groups but their costs, and income, attributed to schools Culture – University organised into Faculties…

Solutions – or, rather, ‘work- arounds’ Focus on the LHRI as a ‘space’ – i.e. a physical resource where people can meet and develop collaboration In advising on grant applications, opportunity spotting to bring people together across disciplines Visiting Research Fellows – promoting applications to grants schemes will bring in visiting fellows, housing them in the LHRI, encouraging colleagues to organise events around them Developing major strategic themes across the Faculty and beyond, hosted by the LHRI, with pumppriming Strategic partnerships – Humanities in Copenhagen – which often encourages interdisciplinary research (not least because cognates researchers in different departments there)