The humanities in Norway: research, research organisation and external engagement

Abstract

The humanities are widely discussed in the science policy debate in Norway. Several books have been published on the field’s nature and uniqueness, and its framework conditions are discussed in leading newspapers and especially in the weekly Morgenbladet, which for a long time ran a series about the “crisis in the humanities”. The field is currently undergoing one of the regular large-scale evaluations coordinated by the Research Council of Norway, and a White Paper on the humanities will be published in 2017. For all these purposes it is important to base them on solid empirical knowledge about what humanities researchers actually do, how they organise their research activities and how they collaborate inside and outside the higher education sector. In this report new analyses are carried out on a large-scale dataset based on a survey to tenured scientific personnel in Norwegian universities and colleges.