What does literary theory have to do with the Detroit River? A lot, it turns out! The Detroit River Story Lab is a great example of what practical humanities looks like – in practice. It is a collectively led interdisciplinary project at the University of Michigan. It is also, importantly, a partnership between several UM schools and colleges and a whole range of local organizations on both sides of the Detroit River. I interviewed David Porter, professor of English and Comparative Literature, who founded the Lab in his interest to explore new, more public-facing ways of doing research in the…
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‘Tis the season here in the US that universities make decisions on their tenure-track hires for the coming fall. I am learning this through my Twitter feed where the freshly nominated assistant professors share their exciting news. In my feed, however, these news are interlaced with other kinds of announcements – most of them, too, exhilarated in their tone but also often flavored with a whole range of other kinds of emotions. These are people sharing their stories of leaving academia. This “quit-lit” contains a double narrative. It testifies to the widening cracks in the walls between academic and other…
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I have been asked a lot about how I ended up here in the US, working on a project on practical humanities. A huge thank you for that opportunity goes to the Fulbright Finland Foundation that is giving me a license to explore a new topic of interest at this point in my career. For any professionals in Finland looking to tweak their job settings, I can warmly recommend the ASLA-Fulbright Mid-Career Professional Program – at the point of writing this, the next application round is about to open! Of course, the topic of practical humanities didn’t just appear out…
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Did you think that scholars in the humanities don’t collaborate with companies in terms of their research? Well, you thought wrong – and so did I, before talking to Heidi Kinnunen, my colleague at the University of Helsinki Research Services. Turns out that this collaboration does exist, but it is usually not named as such, and that’s why it also often goes unnoticed – and uncompensated. The Helsinki business collaboration team – like their colleagues in universities around the world, nowadays – help researchers build successful research partnerships, mostly with companies. Their job is to support academics who wish to…
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I believe you all heard of recent the trouble at Spotify? It started with vaccine misinformation but brought into bright daylight the platform’s tacit endorsement of racism and unfavorable treatment of content by Black artists, the company’s vague attempt to remedy the situation with money, and their stumbling approach to diversity in general. It also made glaringly obvious how badly prepared Spotify was to answer the public outrage that followed. It’s probably not much of a comfort for Spotify to know that they are hardly alone. A global movement for social justice has gradually brought issues of diversity, equity, and…
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Imagine you are an academic working on hate speech. You realize that your research could change the way people interact online. But how do you get your work out there? Or imagine your company hosts a popular online platform that has gone rampant with attacks on migrant communities. You are painfully aware that you should take action. But what action and on what grounds? Spanning boundaries agents are intermediaries whose job it is to help solve these problems. One of the gaps that exist between academic research and its potential uses is the lack of networks connecting academia and business.…
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Interest in solutions to pressing societal challenges is hardly limited to academia. And solutions that have been developed in the academia are usually put into practice somewhere else – by policy makers, by public organizations and NGOs, or as part of a business enterprise. At the same time, current global challenges are so complex that most solutions to them will have their roots in academic research of some kind. In fact, the quality of the solutions often depends on it. So it matters that academic research gets out there. This applies to humanities as much as it applies to any…
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If research impact is not so much a case of direct collision but rather a series of ripple effects, it usually happens through other people. A traditional route for academic impact is through publications, and much of societal impact also happens through texts, such as policy briefs and popular media. Another familiar – but too often overlooked – path to impact is created through teaching in different settings. Colleagues, students, and other people interested in your work pick up your ideas and research results and transform them to their own purposes. Their work gets picked up by next group of…
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