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Authoritarian regimes from the US to China and India perceive many humanities and social sciences as both useless and dangerous. But while their truths might be inconvenient, they are vital to preventing technological developments from tearing already frayed social fabrics, says Saikat Majumdar 

Lack of career rewards for impact and institutional focus on publication metrics highlighted in Sage survey

Rare win for Europe-based economist sees Philippe Aghion rewarded for mathematical modelling of how ‘creative destruction’ underpins growth

More research council funding in the humanities and social sciences should be distributed in the form of micro-grants, says Peter Sutoris

In a postcolonial and technologically advanced age, ignoring most of the world’s languages is no longer tenable, says Tomasz Kamusella

Social sciences ‘the proverbial canary in the coalmine’ for restrictions in other areas of research, dean warns

Ten years ago, just a handful of UK universities had policy institutes. Now, amid the drive for impact, they are ever more common. But are they really the golden ticket to policymakers’ parlours? Are academics willing to be marshalled by them? And do they risk drowning each other out? Jack Grove reports

Social scientists must work hard to verify their conclusions. Too many that do not are rewarded anyway, says Martyn Hammersley

Scientists from the favoured areas raise the strongest objections

We can no longer deem as educated a student who knows nothing about statistics, data analytics or computing, says Daniel Diermeier

Shrinking humanities departments reducing options for those who wish to study close to home, finds British Academy

Outgoing Erasmus University Rotterdam president discusses the underappreciated value of the social sciences, managing student protests and the differences between Dutch and German higher education

As data becomes ever more central to policy and commerce, its creation demands closer scrutiny, say Cristina Alaimo and Jannis Kallinikos

My government-commissioned review is seeking examples of barriers to research on sex and gender faced by UK-based individuals, says Alice Sullivan

Required remedies include harsher punishments, more flexible research design stipulations and stronger social sanctions, says Akhil Bhardwaj

Report authors warn focus on sciences risks making UK research sector ‘lopsided’

The shadow chancellor’s book on female economists is emblematic of UK sociology’s struggle for disciplinary status, says Robert Dingwall

As Max Weber taught, scholars must respect the distinction between facts and values, says Martyn Hammersley

Some politicians are using the supposed ideological character of research to justify imposing greater control over it, says Martyn Hammersley

Scientists and technologists must participate in a genuinely collective project to regulate technological development, says Nicholas Dirks

Disparities of wealth are becoming ever more extreme, yet researchers continue to focus their attention on the poor, laments Michael Marinetto

The technology threatens to impoverish research and destroy humans’ ability to understand the social world, says Dirk Lindebaum

Projects that pose no risk to participants are being distorted or prevented by regulations designed for medical interventions, says Martyn Hammersley

We need to find mechanisms to plug in relevant humanities and social sciences from the very beginning of projects, says Christina Boswell

If those on both the Left and Right fail to examine basic assumptions, knowledge advancement is impaired, says Martyn Hammersley 

Failure to expel crackpot social scientists from Russia’s academy has allowed dangerous dogma to dominate public discourse, says Andreas Umland

The latest A-level data show concerning long-term trends in the popularity of humanities subjects, says Julia Black

If authors are no longer required to justify their fundamental assumptions, where does that leave referees, asks Martyn Hammersley

Analysis reveals that UK scholars tend to move to jobs that bring them into closer conformity with disciplinary standards, says Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra

Head of Cardiff University’s new social sciences centre says virtual working has not dented the case for new ‘superlab’

Losses perceived for holistic views as communications modes show humanists embracing data-heavy styles of the hard sciences

Coyness, contention and competing agendas all hamper historians and sociologists of sex. Matthew Reisz speaks to those who choose, nevertheless, to probe this most sensitive and intimate of subjects

Studying institutional success stories is socially useful and has nothing to do with selling out, say Matthew Flinders and Paul ’t Hart

ESRC extends PhD support to last three-and-a-half years but rejects review’s four-year recommendation

The LSE director on the institution’s green strategy, the importance of social scientists working with industry and the advantages of being ‘different’

Card, Angrist and Imbens of Berkeley, MIT and Stanford take honour for social investigations

There is much to learn from ancient farming techniques, and archaeology can help mental health too, says organiser of Campaign to Save British Archaeology

The narrative that the humanities are haemorrhaging students, funding and political favour is deeply felt around the world. But the evidence of the disciplines’ decline is considerably more nuanced, finds Simon Baker

Right-wing politicians’ caricaturing of a mature research approach is a social dominance power play, says Steve Raven

THE forum hears Manchester v-c spotlight social sciences and humanities, plus universities’ local roles, in vision for post-pandemic future

Funding is declining but business school research is as vital as science to post-pandemic economic recovery, says Zahir Irani

Aston and London South Bank are latest institutions to shutter humanities and social sciences degrees

Without audit studies, we would have an impoverished understanding of discrimination, say S. Michael Gaddis, Charles Crabtree and nine others

Events at the University of Leicester suggest an always tense relationship may be turning toxic, says Ursula Huws

Autocracy starts with the violent repression of students and academics, say Matteo Fumagalli, Achim Kemmerling, Youngmi Kim and Luicy Pedroza

Worries about Islamo-leftism in France and free speech in England reflect disciplines’ straddling of science and activism, says Alexis Artaud de La Ferrière

This isn’t the 18th century. Email and phones exist. So why is so much academic discussion still left to journals, asks Julian Baggini

Academics must emphasise that thinking critically does not mean dismissing everything as biased, say Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren

As Netflix’s film on Sutton Hoo illustrates, collaboration between academic and commercial research enriches understanding of history, says Susan Greaney

The discipline’s existence reflects an enduring Western belief in the inferiority of knowledge production specific to different cultures, says David Simon

Academics say Chinese higher education has long been hobbled by the lack of an ‘accurate system of academic evaluation’

UK minister Kemi Badenoch’s disavowal of the theory plays into a misleading right-wing narrative, says Hannah Robbins

Publications must always permit debate on the quality and relevance of research â€“ plus the efficacy and costs of derived policy, says Robert Dingwall

Study calls for race issues to be embedded into curricula, not taught as an ‘add-on’

India’s National Education Policy aims to establish a seamless connectivity between humanities and science, says Rup Narayan Das

‘Every young student of science has had a fantasy about winning a Nobel prize,’ says one laureate – and ever more rival prizes are being established. But with a cast of thousands currently pursuing the holy grail of a vaccine for Covid-19, might awards committees finally jettison their problematic focus on lone genius, asks Jack Grove

Social scientists should be judged on their impact, while journals should make room for under-represented voices, say academics

Critics underestimated the human imagination’s capacity to render concepts flexible, says Frank Furedi

Latin American university leaders tell THE summit that countries will need skills of non-science graduates as they recover from coronavirus

Failure to improve predictions compounds concerns over effectiveness, accuracy and racial bias