Climate change is often seen as solely a technical problem. This is a misguided belief. Understanding how to build a better world begins, and ends, with understanding the societies which inhabit it.
Pandemics often have animal origins, so prevention is often dominated by health and veterinary sciences. However, social sciences’ role in understanding human behaviour is also crucial to prevention.
From commerce to public policy, cuts to New Zealand’s university humanities departments will have repercussions well beyond the so-called ‘ivory towers’.
Large language models are becoming increasingly capable of imitating human-like responses, creating opportunities to test social science theories on a larger scale and with much greater speed.
Twitter has long allowed anyone to access its data about who tweeted what and when. This has been a boon to research, from public health to criminology. The new fees put that research at risk.
Internships and work-integrated learning for social sciences and humanities students can be part of how post-secondary institutions increase their capacities to contribute to social innovation.
The Coalition government showed a disdain for the arts, humanities and social sciences. The plight of these disciplines requires action from the incoming Labor government on three fronts.
It is the work of social scientists to understand how societies operate and, based on that knowledge, how populations can apply evidence-based solutions to the challenges of the 21st century.
Tight funding and COVID-related limits on face-to-face contact have forced academics to find other ways to expose students to the real-life work they are preparing them for.
Centenary Research Professor, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra; Professor of Political Science, London School of Economics and Political Science