Value and the public humanities

This chapter intervenes in the vital debate concerning the societal impact of humanities research by defining the processes and practices of the public humanities. First, the chapter outlines the socio-historical context for the emerging field; it argues that this interdisciplinary community can be understood as a twenty-first-century response to pressures within higher education worldwide. The chapter also discusses the effects of the fieldification of publically engaged research in the arts and humanities. The majority of this chapter is dedicated to articulating the processes and acts of meta-scholarship involved in enacting the public humanities which are processual and relationship led. The purpose of the chapter is to argue that, rather than accepting the economised limits around impact in/of higher education, the public humanities are working to stretch and expand what knowledge is useful, for whom. Despite the context of ongoing austerity and fiscal pressure within higher education, the culture of ‘doing’ inherent in the work of public humanities might just make enough space for a broadening of articulations of the alternative values that the arts and humanities have long strived to imagine, nurture, and create.