The Australian Academy of the Humanities has been awarded a grant by the Australian Research Council under the Linkage Learned Academies Special Projects Programme to review current activity and likely trends in teaching and research across the academic humanities in Australia.

The last broad survey of the humanities in Australia was conducted a decade ago, and only in the research domain.

The humanities ‘ecology’ has never been mapped comprehensively in Australia. Both the academic workforce and the student cohort are relatively poorly understood in terms of current strengths and weaknesses and likely future trends.

The current study will chart the disposition and trends of the humanities sector in Australia, including student enrolments and likely career paths, the academic workforce and its changing demographic, regional and institutional concentrations, disciplinary strengths, and perceptions of current and emerging academic workforce need.

The project will gather, collate and analyse factual information about the current student body and academic workforce in humanities teaching and research, in the form of both a ‘snapshot’ of the sector and the direction of identifiable underlying trends.

‘Snapshots’ of:

•  the range of research activity currently being conducted in Australian universities across the disciplines of the humanities;
• the range of teaching and learning activity currently being conducted in Australian universities across the disciplines of the humanities; and
• the demographic and institutional profile of the humanities student cohort and academic workforce in Australian universities.

Recent and likely future trends in:

• research activity;
• teaching and learning activity; and
• student and academic workforce populations, including disciplinary capacity, the ageing workforce, the qualification gap and regional provision.

The knowledge achieved will assist universities, government, policymakers, industry, and the community to understand the current and future capacities of humanities teaching, research and scholarship in Australia, and will better inform decisions about developing academic capability in light of areas of identified emergent need.

For further information, please contact the project Chief Investigator Dr John Byron or Project Researcher Dr Kylie Brass