Christopher Thompson
Wed, 7 Feb at 12:09
I have been following the contributions to the debates on
the future of British Studies on the NACBS website with considerable interest.
There is a degree of pessimism in some of these contributions about the
prospects for this field in general and about the employment prospects for
existing and aspiring academic historians in particular. There are sound
reasons for these apprehensions, not least because governments and
universities' administrations across the English-speaking countries are focused
on wealth creation, on subjects that improve the performance of their economies
like the sciences, technology and mathematics. Amongst the wider public
in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, on the other hand, there is intense
interest in the past, in the histories of countries and communities,
localities, social groups and individuals. In that sense, historical studies
are in robust health and are likely to remain so. It is to the credit of the
Royal Historical Society in the United Kingdom that it has responded to the
threats to History Departments here by developing a strategy to contact public
decision makers about the merits of the subject and its importance in the
cultural and intellectual life of this country.
I do not think that it is very likely that historical
subjects will come under threat in universities like those at Oxford and
Cambridge. Elsewhere, I fear that some accountants and administrators see
history as a soft and dispensable target. This is a profound mistake.
Nonetheless, I do believe that historians engaged with the past of the British
Isles should begin to make a more active use of the resources of the internet
to establish links to archival resources for the subject, to create more
enduring on-line institutions to promote the subject, to make available
teachers and teaching to those unable to gain entry to courses at universities,
to supply suitable teaching materials and so on. Sites like Philosophy
Bites have been highly successful in addressing the needs of those
interested in that subject. The Open University has been able to reach
outside traditional audiences to address the interests of those beyond the
customary audiences for the discipline of history.
The time to start preparing alternatives as a supplement to
and support for the subject has arrived. It is not a counsel of despair but one
of prudent anticipation and preventative action here and across other
English-speaking countries. It is not a perfect solution but it may help to
avert a worse outcome.
