| Speaker | Prof. Andrea Bonaccorsi, University of Pisa |
|---|---|
| Time | 19:00-20:30 (JST), 11:00–12:30(CET), Nov 16 Mon, 2026 |
| Venue | Online: Zoom link will be sent by the day before the seminar via e-mail. |
| Sponsor | GRIPS Innovation, Science and Technology Policy Program (GIST) Research Project to Develop Data Infrastructure and Indicators for Monitoring the Humanities and Social Sciences funded by MEXT |
| Language | English (No Japanese translation) |
| Fee | Free (Pre-registration required) |
<Outline>
Humanities are a significant part of research and higher education systems in all countries, but their role is underevaluated in government funding, science policy, and general opinion.
The seminar suggests two main directions of improvement. The first direction is the production of new data on scientific research in humanities. Data are missing on books, book chapters, journal in non-English languages, non-indexed journals- all of which are essential to the scientific communication. The seminar will report on a pioneering initiative for the creation of the first large scale dataset, called Perspecti, based on curated perimeters of research. Fresh data on types of publication, languages, inward and outward citations are opening new perspectives on humanities.
In parallel to these developments, the seminar discusses epistemological issues. The starting point is the persistence of an old prejudice, according to which humanities are intellectually brilliant, but scientifically weak.
Based on the recent book The knowledge of humanities (Brepols, 2026) the seminar offers insights from several disciplines (history, literary criticism, history of art and architecture) and recent developments in post-Kuhnian philosophy of science to defend the thesis of full scale scientific nature of research in humanities.
<Notifications>
This is an online seminar.
Zoom link will be sent by the day before the seminar via e-mail.
