What's Over the Horizon for UK Research Collaboration in Europe?

NO.31 AUTUMN 2017 ISSN 2047-1866 BRITISH ACADEMY REVIEW REVIEW ACADEMY BRITISH British Academy ReUNDERSTANDING PEOPLES, vi PEOPLES, CULTURES, e SOCIETIES wCULTURES, – PAST, PRESENT, SOCIETIES FUTURE — PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE What’s over the horizon for UK research NO.31AUTUMN 2017 collaboration in Europe? The British Academy’s purpose is to inspire and support high achievement in the humanities and social sciences throughout the UK and Meet the new President: David Cannadine ¶ History lessons internationally, and to promote their public value. from Robert Frost about unions, nations and states ¶ The lure of the Anglosphere ¶ Ian Diamond on the skills we need British Academy Review ISSN 2047–1866 © The British Academy 2017 The British Academy Review is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. The British Academy Review contains articles illustrating the wide range of scholarship which the British Academy promotes in its role as the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. Views of named writers are the views exclusively of those writers; publication does not constitute endorsement by the British Academy. Suggestions for articles by current and former British Academy grant- and post-holders, as well as by Fellows of the British Academy, are very welcome. Suggestions may be sent to the Editor, James Rivington, at [email protected] Designed by Soapbox, www.soapbox.co.uk Printed in Great Britain by Henry Ling Limited at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, Dorset The British Academy The British Academy Officers of the Senior Staff 10–11 Carlton House Terrace British Academy Chief Executive: London SW1Y 5AH Alun Evans President The British Academy, Professor Sir David Cannadine Director of Finance and established by Royal Charter Corporate Services: in 1902, is the UK’s national Vice-Presidents Robert Hopwood academy for the humanities and Professor Dominic Abrams social sciences – the study of Vice-President Director of Research peoples, cultures and societies, (Social Sciences) Funding and Policy: past, present and future. Vivienne Hurley Professor Ash Amin Further information about Foreign Secretary Director of Communications: the work of the Academy Liz Hutchinson Professor John Baines can be found via Vice-President Director of Development: www.britishacademy.ac.uk (British International Jo Hopkins Research Institutes) @britac_news Professor Alan Bowman TheBritishAcademy Vice-President (Humanities) britacfilm Professor Roger Kain britishacademy Vice-President (Research and Higher Education Policy) Revd Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch Kt Vice-President (Public Engagement) Professor Mary Morgan Vice-President (Publications) Professor Genevra Richardson Vice-President (Public Policy) Professor Sarah Worthington Treasurer Front cover image: Romolo Tavani/Shutterstock British No. 31 Academy Autumn 2017 Review Contents EDITORIAL 25 Ash Amin · On geese, gold and eggs ................................. 2 THE INTERVIEWS Portraits of leading humanities and social sciences academics at work David Cannadine ...............................................................4 Ian Diamond ..................................................................... 11 EUROPEAN RESEARCH COLLABORATION AND FUNDING Understanding what’s at stake for the future Ash Amin and Philip Lewis · Why Brexit matters for the humanities and social sciences ..................17 Colin Crouch · Knowledge beyond frontiers ...................20 Simon Goldhill · Interdisciplinary collaborative research in British universities post-Brexit .......................22 Anne Fuchs · Borders, Brexit and the Irish Academic Community ..............................................25 Simon Keay · Connectivity – in the Roman Mediterranean, and in archaeological research ................. 28 AND THE WINNERS ARE… Rachel Griffith · Food choices and public policy ..............32 Who has won British Academy prizes? Kayleigh Garthwaite and Claudia Hammond · GLOBAL INSIGHTS Telling it like it is ............................................................. 50 Understanding the world we live in Nayef Al-Rodhan · Understanding global Robert Frost · Unions, nations and states: culture – and ourselves ......................................................53 A historical perspective .....................................................36 Andrew Mycock and Ben Wellings · EMERGING PERSPECTIVES The Anglosphere: Past, present and future ....................... 42 Writing by British Academy-supported early Gordon Campbell · From the East Midlands career scholars to the Middle East ........................................................... 46 Uri Horesh · Language as a reflection of society: Examples from Palestinian Arabic ....................................55 BRITISH INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH INSTITUTES FROM THE ARCHIVE John Bennet · From Grexit to Brexit: The British Academy Dining Club, October 1917 ............. 59 A view from Athens ........................................................ 48 COMING UP British Academy events open to all Identities and belonging ...................................................60 EDITORIAL On geese, gold and eggs Ash Amin On 6 September 2017, the government by a mounting body of evidence, including our new re- 1 announced its intention to negotiate port and the articles in this issue of the British Academy continued membership to EU research Review. The story, for the sciences and the humanities, is Professor Ash Amin is Head of Geography funding programmes, allowing UK re- one of disproportionately favourable returns to the UK, at the University of searchers to have full access to funds and not just in terms of funding flows, but also leadership Cambridge. He was to lead research programmes. This news of collaborative projects, policy influence, and the steady elected a Fellow of may not have caused a public stir, but it flow of outstanding European researchers – emergent the British Academy was received with relief in the UK higher and established – to UK universities. These are only some in 2007, and is the education and research community. But of the highlights of full membership. British Academy’s Foreign Secretary. soon there emerged a worry around the But lest this begins to sound like a narrow cost-benefit paper’s silence over the free movement analysis, there is a deeper story to be told, one about how of people that full access would presume. the UK has emerged as a global player in the advance- And in fact, the government has been stu- ment of ‘frontier’ knowledge. Having sat on an Advanced diously quiet about this question, putting into doubt the Grant Panel of the very substantial European Research pledge – without mobility, we will only be able to secure Council (ERC), I saw first hand that the projects funded third-party access to programmes, and besides, not as after rigorous peer review by leading scholars from all programme leaders. over Europe were exactly like those described in this It is vital that the status of full membership of EU issue by Professors Diamond, Crouch, Goldhill, Keay research programmes does come to prevail, because so and Griffith. They were discovery/blue-sky projects on far it has served the UK exceptionally well, across the full large questions needing the very best researchers from range of EU initiatives on offer. This is amply confirmed different countries to come together in interdiscipli- 1. Brexit means…? The British Academy’s Priorities for the Humanities and Social Sciences in the Current Negotiations (British Academy, November 2017). 2 AUTUMN 2017 BRITISH ACADEMY REVIEW nary teams. There is no comparable funding mecha- programmes, will fracture a mode of working that has nism anywhere else, one that bravely chooses to commit yielded an academic cosmopolitanism in the UK that large grants to high-risk but high-dividend research is enviable. that promises to be transformative and of major intel- Why kill off the goose that laid the golden egg? Sus- lectual and social worth. As Colin Crouch insightfully taining participation in EU research programmes poses observes (page 20), Europe has put into place a unique no threat to the UK developing further international col- cross-national infrastructure of research support that is laborations, as some seem to think. In fact, as Crouch ar- not replicated nationally (certainly not in the UK), to en- gues, it is the basis for developing new connections, in so able cross-border research on global issues. far as the EU-supported research environment in the UK Impressively, the UK has emerged at the helm of has played its part in attracting researchers from India, ‘frontier’ research, if funding success rates and flows China, the US and other parts of the world to the UK. If of people are an indicator, and most importantly, with Brexit means the end of European research participation the appropriate infrastructure and incentives in place and collaboration, the wider globalism spoken of by the to facilitate such research, we have gone from strength government will be at risk, for there will be no transna- to strength. The environment in the UK has improved so tional framework for collaborative research, and in the much that the UK has become a key hub attracting top meantime the attractiveness of the UK research base will researchers to work here, including continental winners have waned. Globalism without Europe seems odd in of ERC grants choosing to bring their projects to the any case, suggesting that ‘Anglosphere’

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