Should humanities academics be more open to applied research rather than just pure research?

I was asked by a director of a digital humanities centre overseas my thoughts on pure or applied research for Digital Humanities academics.

The following is an edited and slightly bridged reply.

Quite a few Australian universities seem to be moving to industry-driven research, especially if they are not the Group of 8, or feel geographically disadvantaged. Australian universities may feel this helps guard against reduced federal funding and diversifies income streams, perhaps they think they are more likely to gain large research centres, Centres of Excellence and other funding and prestige if large companies join them.

For humanities, this can be quite dangerous because those few companies with major clout related to humanities interest (especially in social media) can be difficult to deal with in terms of IP or how they treat their market or very conservative because they don’t want to scare off their client base. (Caveat: for Australian GLAM sector-related research that I am connected with, this does not yet appear to be such a problem).

Sadly, the Australian national priorities are not even aimed at pure (scientific) research https://www.arc.gov.au/grants/grant-application/science-and-research-priorities let alone NZ, UK or EU Horizon2020-type engagement and impact (communities etc). Let alone how to teach critical thinking. Shouldn’t educational research be a national priority? Is learning how to live together in an extremely diverse society where nearly one in four is born overseas, worthy of research? I think so!

But I wonder if humanities academics do not like the idea of applied research or industry-driven research to them (I don’t think the terms are completely synonymous). Industry-driven research is very interesting, actually, wasn’t Aristotle an industry-driven researcher, in the sense of being asked to solve things? I suspect Leonardo was, partly, as well. The more DH approaches design questions, the more I suspect it will be industry-partnered if not industry-driven. Because much design research is industry-driven.

This gets back to the paradox that many humanities content creators were design-brief driven, or patron-influenced; more so than the academics who study them in the humanities.

When I worked in a design school in a Creative Arts College (faculty), the brief and the client were seen to separate designers from artists. I do believe DH needs more interaction design and evaluation skills, but I have bias here, I work with design problems and match them or try to with philosophical insights and luckily so far don’t have to worry about appeasing clients. For many designers, applied research is bread and butter. Their typical problem is showing how that is research!

So, in a roundabout way to answer this question, I do question why academics think working with industry is bad, I don’t question that they are wary in terms of being overly influenced, swayed to consider income rather than meaning, or loss of intellectual property. But these challenges are perhaps solvable as separate issues. And industry can provide people, test subjects, prototype development technologies, and metrics to measure against.

Sorry for the long blogpost, I actually have much more to think/write about, this is the starting and abridged version!