Writing about the relevance, position and contribution of research and teaching in the humanities and, to a growing degree, the social sciences also, seems to reach back at least 200 years, if not into the Middle Ages (e.g., Gengnagel & Hamann, 2014). However, also in younger times, academic publications have not shied away to problematize this topic, and disciplines and faculties on the social sciences and humanities (SSH) spectrum  are consistently being argued to face an uncertain future and are experiencing increasing pressure to justify their relevance and contribution towards universities and society (e.g., Barnett & Nixon, 2012; Biesta, 2015; Nussbaum, 2016).

The wealth of publications about SSH seems to be growing, and the corpus of writings can only be described as diverse. Authors have both underpinned and challenged notions of whether SSH is in crisis in terms of students and graduates (e.g., Roberts, 2021); others  have added nuance through differentiating sites and arenas of the debate (e.g., Meranze, 2015). Also, notable efforts have been made to propose and implement evaluation and performance measurement systems that cater to the specific attributes of SSH knowledge production and dissemination (e.g., Johansson et al., 2020). However, what has not been noted in detail so far is that these writings, produced by the scholarly community, themselves can be seen as interpretations of the situation of SSH, thus contributing to and shaping the discourse around SSH’s future. Moreover, they must be understood as a reaction to political decisions, economic rationalities, and societal expectations, thus shifting and evolving over time.  

It must be acknowledged that discourses on SSH have unfolded in different parts of the world over the last fifty years. Notably, a strong North American tradition can be traced, with publications specifically diving into the role and relevance of the US college systems and the integration of liberal arts (e.g., Franke, 2009; Harpham, 2005). The heavy debates in some of the American publications around declining student numbers in SSH programs can furthermore be interpreted as an effect of a heavily monetized private university sector (e.g., Meranze, 2015). In contrast, the European perspective seems to be influenced more by the interplay between universities and the welfare state as their primary source of economic revenue, and the European Union as the supranational funding source to the higher education sector. Concomitantly, other topics have come to the fore, such as the measurement of impact and relevance of SSH for society (e.g., Sivertsen, 2016) or the contribution SSH can make to the progress of innovation in Europe (e.g., Felt, 2014). For analytical clarity, we are focusing our analyses on academic writings originating in and/or elaborating about SSH in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).  

Against this backdrop, the current paper reports on two studies aimed providing insights into the state, development, and topicality of the academic discourse on the role, relevance and organization of social sciences and humanities over the last 50 years, as expressed in academic writings.

Methodologically, study 1 combined the use of a scoping review technique (Grant & Booth, 2009) with the more novel approaches science mapping (Kunisch et al., 2023) and bibliographic analysis (Donthu et al., 2021), hence a methodology relatively novel to educational research, by scrutinizing a relatively broad and internationally visible corpus of materials. Materials were retrieved through search in the two complementary databases Web of Science Core (WoS) Collection (1975-present) and the Scopus citation index, released by the world’s largest scholarly publisher, Elsevier. Analysis procedures applied to this material were first a screening of the material, narrowing down an initial n=5243 records to n=145 papers included in the review. Second, the science mapping procedures of bibliographic coupling, co-occurrence analysis and co-word analysis were applied, as well as an automatic content analysis in the program Leximancer (Crofts & Bisman, 2010). The analysis was focused specifically on gaining insights on indicators on the communities forming through publication and citation practices as well as disciplinary affiliation, on topical positionings and on shifts in these attributes over time, as well as on emergent discursive fields within the SSH literature. For study 2, n= 35 highly cited papers from the above corpus are now being analyzed in several iterations of close reading following Gee (2014), focusing on both linguistic properties as well as their situated meaning, sociality, intertextuality and contexts. For each paper included into this analysis, the aim is to describe the narrative that is established around what SSH is and what the field can and does contribute, as well to extract permeating and/or distinguishing discourses between the papers.

Results of study 1 present discourses on SSH to be fragmented in various aspects: Publication intensity seems to fluctuate over time and research presents as only weakly concentrated in selected outlets. Also, authors engage with a broad variety of angles towards SSH, and we could find only weak interdisciplinary links between the fields of study engaging with the topic. However, as patterns salient throughout the analysis we can see a growing number of publications within the output, impact, and measurement discourse in higher education especially in the UK, a decline of the discourse about universities per see vs. an incline in discourses about funding, evaluation, and students. Finally, the results from study 1 show the emergence of a stand-alone discourse around the label “SSH”. Preliminary findings from study 2 point towards a predominantly positive positioning towards SSH of the papers under analysis. Within the discourses emergent, the most outstanding is a crisis-discourse which either sees SSH as in crises or contributing to solving the global, economical, or ecological crises in and of society. Furthermore, authors are either proactively arguing for SSH's justification (and future) in itself, or they are adaptively arguing for SSH's justification (and future) by virtue of integration with other scientific fields. Here, a discourse of integration emerges, where interdisciplinarity is being promoted as a response to complex, global problems. Finally, a discourses of value creation becomes obvious from the material, which fundamentally revolves around the question of measurement and valorisation of SSH's research and contributions. The results of both studies will be elaborated on in the presentation regarding their supplementing insights.

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