Even the science stuff is somewhat woke. The prosthetics abstract claims that lack of not-yet-invented prosthetics contravenes the human rights of people who have been blown up by land mines. As there are no minefields in the UK, and nobody has a human right to prosthetics (or any other new technologies), that's not a clear example of what the UK should be funding. Companies can easily develop and sell prosthetics.
The small mercy is that AHRC has the smallest budget of the nine and is a minnow compared with the biggest which appears to be grounded in serious and useful science. Still it looks like an easy saving of £204m. I doubt that many outside the recipients of the taxpayers’ largesse would mourn its abolition.
I would bet that there’s also some iffy stuff going on in the ESRC, but at least it’s the second smallest budget.
The government could stop - immediately - the AHRC - and there would still be tens, if not hundreds, of millions of pounds available for Humanities research.
Firstly, a big percentage of UK research funding goes straight to the universities, which are then free to spend it on whatever research they choose:
Even the science stuff is somewhat woke. The prosthetics abstract claims that lack of not-yet-invented prosthetics contravenes the human rights of people who have been blown up by land mines. As there are no minefields in the UK, and nobody has a human right to prosthetics (or any other new technologies), that's not a clear example of what the UK should be funding. Companies can easily develop and sell prosthetics.
The small mercy is that AHRC has the smallest budget of the nine and is a minnow compared with the biggest which appears to be grounded in serious and useful science. Still it looks like an easy saving of £204m. I doubt that many outside the recipients of the taxpayers’ largesse would mourn its abolition.
I would bet that there’s also some iffy stuff going on in the ESRC, but at least it’s the second smallest budget.
The government could stop - immediately - the AHRC - and there would still be tens, if not hundreds, of millions of pounds available for Humanities research.
Firstly, a big percentage of UK research funding goes straight to the universities, which are then free to spend it on whatever research they choose:
https://www.ukri.org/publications/explainer-dual-support-funding-for-uk-research-and-innovation/explainer-dual-support-funding-for-research-and-innovation/
Secondly, The Leverhulme Trust funds this sort of research to the tune of £100m per year:
https://researchoutreach.org