Quality and the Humanities
Negotiating Research Quality in Swedish Humanities, 1980s–2020s
Time: Fri 2025-11-14 14.00
Location: F3 (Flodis), Lindstedtsvägen 26 & 28, Stockholm
Video link: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/68961491391
Language: English
Subject area: History of Science, Technology and Environment
Doctoral student: Klara Müller , Historiska studier av teknik, vetenskap och miljö
Opponent: Professor David Budtz Pedersen, Aalborg University, Denmark
Supervisor: Senior Professor Sverker Sörlin, Historiska studier av teknik, vetenskap och miljö; Professor Linus Salö, Stockholms universitet
QC 20251027
Abstract
From the late twentieth century, processes aiming at quality gained ground in research policy. These aligned broader societal movements toward procedures such as quality assurance, auditing, and management, often grouped under New Public Management (NPM). This thesis investigates how the emergence of this regulatory discourse on quality has affected perceptions of what constitutes quality in the humanities. Unlike much existing work on research quality, which concentrates on STEM fields, this thesis centers on the humanities. The humanities are not treated here as outliers or latecomers in policy, but rather as areas of scholarly production with distinctive quality cultures. Drawing on archival material, policy documents, interviews, and academic publications, the thesis examines selected “quality sites,” including research seminars, editorial peer review, disciplinary evaluations, and research policy discussions. The cases demonstrate that established quality cultures existed within the humanities well before the formalization of quality procedures. They further show how humanities scholars have not only been passive or reactive recipients of new quality discourses and requirements but have developed responsive quality articulations – contextual adaptations that have integrated new requirements with existing internal practices. Changing conceptions and practices of quality have also contributed to the reshaping of the humanities, for example, through the broad introduction of a formalized practice of peer review in Swedish humanities journals. By moving beyond binary oppositions, such as the distinction between measurable and intrinsic, or neoliberal and disciplinary, the thesis gives a historically grounded account of how quality has been conceptualized and practiced in the humanities. In doing so, it nuances previous accounts of the history of the humanities since the 1980s. It contributes new perspectives on the history of research quality and theoretical tools for analyzing research quality in a historical context. The findings of the thesis invite a rethinking of what research quality means, not merely as a policy concept, but as a lived and developing scholarly practice within the humanities.