2015-05-06

James Wilsdon talks about the role of metrics in researcg assessment and the opportunities & dilemmas for the social sciences & humanities. Citations, journal impact factors, H-indices, even tweets and Facebook likes – there are no end of quantitative measures that can now be used to assess the quality and wider impacts of research. But how robust and reliable are such indicators, and what weight – if any – should we give them in the management of the UK's research system? Over the past year, the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management has looked in detail at these questions. The review has explored the use of metrics across the full range of academic disciplines, and assessed their potential contribution to processes of research assessment like the REF. It has looked at how universities themselves use metrics, at the rise of league tables and rankings, at the relationship between metrics and issues of equality and diversity, and at the potential for 'gaming' that can arise from the use of particular indicators in the funding system. The review's final report, The Metric Tide, will be published on 9 July. In advance of this, James Wilsdon will use this talk to preview its findings, with a particular focus on opportunities & dilemmas for the social sciences & humanities. The second part of his talk will look at the broader post-election prospects for social science funding & influence within government, building on the Campaign for Social Science's recent report 'The Business of People'.

The Sybille Haynes Lecture 2015: Pirates of Populonia? The Myth of Etruscan Piracy in the Mediterranean

A discussion of Jim Reed's book Jim Reed (Taylor Professor of German, University of Oxford) discusses his book Light in Germany: Scenes from an Unknown Enlightenment with Joachim Whaley (Professor of German History and Thought, University of Cambridge) and Kevin Hilliard (Lecturer in German, University of Oxford). The event is chaired by Ritchie Robertson (Taylor Professor of German, University of Oxford) About the book: Germany’s political and cultural past from ancient times through World War II has dimmed the legacy of its Enlightenment, which these days is far outshone by those of France and Scotland. In this book, T. J. Reed clears the dust away from eighteenth-century Germany, bringing the likes of Kant, Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, and Gotthold Lessing into a coherent and focused beam that shines within European intellectual history and reasserts the important role of Germany’s Enlightenment. Reed looks closely at the arguments, achievements, conflicts, and controversies of these major thinkers and how their development of a lucid and active liberal thinking matured in the late eighteenth century into an imaginative branching that ran through philosophy, theology, literature, historiography, science, and politics. He traces the various pathways of their thought and how one engendered another, from the principle of thinking for oneself to the development of a critical epistemology; from literature’s assessment of the past to the formulation of a poetic ideal of human development. Ultimately, Reed shows how the ideas of the German Enlightenment have proven their value in modern secular democracies and are still of great relevance—despite their frequent dismissal—to us in the twenty-first century.

Reuters Institute Business and Practice of Journalism seminar by Laurie Benson, Chief Executive of Upnexxt. We apologise for the interference in this recording.