Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
PROFESSOR PHILIP
ESLER
28 FEBRUARY 2007
Q20 Chris Mole: Last year you consulted
on the Council's strategy which is due to go into force this April.
What responses did you get from consultees and when will you be
publishing the strategy?
Professor Esler: I spent a weekend
reading the responses some time last year and in general they
were very supportive. The universities especially, I think, were
highly supportive of the whole operation and in the end the draft
document was changed in response to those answers we received
but not much. I think people around the academic arena in the
arts and humanities have bought into a new project which does
involve strategic research, internationalisation and knowledge
transfer. They also, I think, welcome the fact—as we point
out in our fourth aim—that we are there to be a public advocate
here and abroad for the importance of arts and humanities research.
I think they are right behind us on that.
Q21 Chris Mole: The draft strategy
mentioned emerging and endangered disciplines. What is that referring
to and what actions are you taking to protect strategically important
and vulnerable subjects? What involvement have you had with HEFCE
in this area?
Professor Esler: Each year the
Research Councils prepare a document which talks about the health
of disciplines in their own academic communities. We get some
of these from the HESA statistics which include the ages of the
various cohorts of academics (what percentage of a particular
discipline are professors over fifty, for example), the numbers
of contract research staff, the numbers of postgraduates in the
discipline itself, so we actually get quite a good sense of the
health of particular disciplines by doing this. Clearly if you
have a discipline which has a preponderance of professors nearing
retirement, no contract research staff and not many doctoral students
and we think it is an important area, that is an issue. In relation
to specific initiatives, the most obvious thing we have done which
does involve HEFCE, the Scottish Funding Council and the ESRC
is to establish five centres for language based area studies.
For example, there is one led by Edinburgh but involving Manchester
and Durham which is the centre for the study of the Arab world.
There are other centres that we funded to do with Japan, China
and Eastern Europe. We perceive that these are strategically important
subjects. We previously had some ring-fenced doctoral awards which
covered, for example, aspects of the material heritage of the
UK and also European linguistics. We do pay attention to the health
of disciplines. If, as we almost certainly will do, we move towards
a new approach to funding postgraduate programmes (which means
moving away from a competition to devolution of the selection
of students at universities plus liaising with them as to their
strategy) we will then have another arena in which to look at
the health of disciplines, because we can then consult with them
in relation to the postgraduates that they wish to provide our
money to in order to ensure that there is a spread across disciplines
that we think could be in danger.
Q22 Linda Gilroy: I was surprised
to see that amongst certainly the strategically important you
mentioned but vulnerable groups was the Arabic language. Is that
right, is it vulnerable as well as strategically important?
Professor Esler: I do not think
it is now; I think it was some years ago. If you look at the official
report in the United States after 9/11 you discover that US universities
in the year before produced about six graduates in Arabic. We
never got to that state but I know that some universities have
seen in the last five years the number of students entering first
year Arabic go up five or six times. I think we are probably out
of the danger zone in relation to Arabic.
Q23 Linda Gilroy: It is something
you are keeping your eye on because it is very strategically important.
The Iraq Study Group did identify exactly what you have just said,
that in America they have very few Arabic speakers in their embassy
out in Bagdad whereas we still do and Arabists in the Foreign
Service have always been a key part of that.
Professor Esler: I am very enthusiastic
about Arabic. I have been trying to learn it for the past nine
months in fact. It is a language which is critically important
and it is obviously going to remain so for years and years.
Q24 Chris Mole: You touched on interdisciplinary
research a couple of times but what do you think are the real
challenges there and what are you doing to rise to them?
Professor Esler: The big problem
is that there are intellectual problems and strategic research
problems which simply cannot be categorised in terms of the disciplines
which were generated in the 19th century and which we still have
now. To an extent young colleagues, especially like the security
that comes from doing a doctorate in a particular discipline and
becoming part of that community. They still see that as being
important to their career, but nevertheless intellectual problems
do not always fit into tight disciplinary boxes. You have to encourage
colleagues to break out of those boxes and certainly my own research
career has always involved bridging humanities and social sciences.
I think at present we are perfectly happy to take within the AHRC
applications that touch two or more panels. We already do that
but there is this perception that having the eight panels is nevertheless
going to be an obstacle to the process. That is one of the drivers
for looking at the whole structure of decision making leading
to what will probably be the dissolution of the panels which will
then mean that we have selecting committees which are not there
representing a particular disciplinary board. I think that once
that has happened we will probably get more, but we will certainly
have eliminated the perception that we are not doing enough to
encourage them.
Q25 Chris Mole: Did you actually
say when you would be publishing the strategy?
Professor Esler: The text is finalised.
It is either about to go to a layout provider or it has already
just gone, I am just not sure. We are very close to being in a
position to produce it in its final form. The text is complete.
Q26 Chairman: In terms of the interdisciplinary
research I can understand what you have told us in terms of changing
the approach to grant giving in terms of a multidisciplinary approach,
but is there still in your view an issue over peer review and
getting the right people together in terms of peer reviewing broadly
based interdisciplinary research and do you have a solution to
that problem?
Professor Esler: We do have a
college of peer reviewers with several hundred trained people
on it, so we are fairly well supplied. Our problem is that we
do not have enough international peer reviewers; I think we have
five to 10 per cent international. If we were to address that
we would be in a stronger position when we receive applications
that are interdisciplinary. Indeed, it is one of the issues that
we are working on actively with our European friends. We have
proposed to our European colleagues in HERA that we establish
a European College of Humanities Peer Reviewers. We have actually
provided an outline structure for that and we are going to be
meeting the German research body, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft,
next week and that is certainly one of the items on the agenda
there too. It is a big issue because even though we have a large
community you do get applications that do not obviously find the
right peer reviewers even in our large peer reviewer college.
So it is an issue.
Q27 Chairman: Is it an issue that
you talk about across RCUK as well?
Professor Esler: I think you will
find that most of the other Research Councils use international
peer reviewers much more than we do. Indeed, that is an area of
best practice that we are learning from them in part. The MRC
has a huge percentage of its reviewers abroad. We would like to
move more in that direction.
Q28 Dr Turner: Professor Esler, we
are accustomed to looking at knowledge transfer in the context
of science and technology and can only assume that it is rather
different in your field. Does the concept as we understand knowledge
transfer and exploitation really apply in anything remotely the
same way in arts and humanities?
Professor Esler: The issue here
is to generate a model of knowledge transfer that is big enough
to embrace all of the areas and certainly in RCUK we have done
that. In the operation of the new high level group in RCUK that
I chair we have done that very effectively. I do not actually
believe that a one or two sentence definition will get you there.
I think it is quite a complex reality which can be modelled but
not easily defined in a sentence or two. Essentially we are looking
at a two-way flow of people or ideas. I think that is the critical
thing. That two-way flow of people and ideas is occurring in arenas
that go beyond the traditional academic ones of monographs, learned
journals or essays, so that is the next thing. Thirdly, it can
operate in a variety of settings. One is a purely economic one
where it is directed to generating a new product or a new service
or the spinning out of a new company, but then secondly there
is the big public policy setting where research by, for example,
ourselves or the ESRC could have a profound impact on policy in
relation to obesity. Thirdly, it has a very pertinent application
in relation to what we call quality of life issues which are the
cultural dynamics of our existence which are so important for
human flourishing in literature, in art and so forth which feed
directly into the creative industries and the heritage industries
(museums, galleries, culture and tourism). In the RCUK context
we have that kind of model in mind. Certainly, as you suggest,
the old linear model where the scientist has the wonderful discovery,
it becomes a patent, a company exploits the patent and sells the
product does not apply to us but increasingly even in the scientific
communities they are seeing problems with it. One of the big problems
with it is that knowledge transfer is a two-way process which
is why we sometimes call it knowledge exchange. Researchers who
are engaging with other communities beyond academia get new ideas
for their research and that includes industrial collaboration.
It is a big conflict which we think we have addressed now, partly
stimulated by your own report last year.
Q29 Dr Turner: Industrial involvement,
a familiar part of the picture as far as we are concerned, commonly
involves either engaging with SMEs or the creation of new SMEs.
How does this work in arts and humanities? Are you able to engage
with SMEs?
Professor Esler: Yes. There are
a variety of possibilities. We have just introduced a new knowledge
transfer product which is called Catalyst which is, if you like,
a cut down Knowledge Transfer Partnership, cut down in that it
is suited to small companies because we will fund a period of
academic presence in the SME for as short a period as three months.
We have just got our first one of those with a gaming company
agreed so that is the beginning. We have begun talking with SEEDA
in relation to a similar scheme and we might be able to bring
the two schemes together. That is a very good example of engagement
with SMEs. The problem with engagement is that there are hundreds
of thousands of them. Many of them are so busy just working on
the current contract that they do not engage with university researchers
and if they do not engage with university researchers they are
not going to have heard of us. We have to build bridges with them.
One way is through RDAs and we are certainly working with SEEDA
and also with the south-western RDA whom we know quite well now.
We are also having these particular products such as Catalyst
which we can just roll out through our academic contacts who are
the ones who will build bridges to the small companies. We are
operating at such a high level, if you like, that it is hard for
us to engage individually with all those SMEs so we need mediator
organisations or persons and they are either the RDAs or academics
that are working with us. There is also the fact that humanities
research itself provides knowledge transfer possibilities. One
example would be an eminent historian who works with a computer
expert to generate an exciting three-dimensional model, say, of
the Battle of Culloden. The technology already exists to do this
but to populate the programme involves significant historical
or archaeological expertise; it must involve people in our community.
Some of the proposals we have recently received in our Knowledge
Transfer Fellowship scheme (we have just had our first successful
round in the last few weeks) involve things like that. It is about
harnessing unsuspected areas in the humanities—not just
in arts which is more obvious—and pushing them into new
contexts beyond academia where the knowledge they have can make
a demonstrable impact which is what we are about.
Q30 Dr Turner: So we are going to
see a new level in the quality of computer games, are we?
Professor Esler: The computer
games industry is worth billions to the UK. It is not just about
entertainment, the same technology can be used to train people
on how to respond if a bomb goes off in an underground train.
You can involve people in a three dimensional experience which,
if it is not realistic (realism means a strong narrative, emotional
depth, powerful visuality, et cetera) it may not be a very effective
learning environment. It is a very serious issue.
Q31 Dr Turner: I can imagine these
could be very powerful teaching tools.
Professor Esler: Yes. On an institutional
visit recently I went to Bangor in Wales where they have a very
powerful, multi-million pound 3-D visualisation suite and it struck
me when I saw how this operated that any humanities academic could
actually generate superlative teaching materials if only they
learned how to use the software.
Q32 Dr Turner: You have also said
that for measuring the effectiveness of knowledge transfer strategies
metrics are far too blunt a tool and you are looking for new approaches.
Could you enlarge on that a little?
Professor Esler: Metrics helps
you to an extent. It is obviously useful to know that your colleague
in x university has patented something on research you funded
which has become a useful product. That cannot be ignored and
I have seen that position in relation to one or two products even
though we are the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Ultimately
what we are trying to do is to show that the new knowledge our
researchers generate has made a demonstrable impact in another
setting. We have to show what kind of impact that is. In part
it will be commercial. The product that I have just mentioned,
the software product providing an experience of the Battle of
Culloden, that conceivably could be sold as a commercial product
either on-site or for off-site tourism for example. On the other
hand it will have an impact on the people who use it and measuring
the impact is difficult. We have not solved it and no-one in the
world has solved it. Part of the story must be in narratives of
change, in other words part of the story must be in actually having
people tell you how particular knowledge transfer activity changed
their life. That is real and that is demonstrable but other ways
of approaching this can be generated. We have recently had Price
Waterhouse Coopers give us some very good advice in this area.
One of the things they do is to look at contingent valuation so
if, for example, a city lacks a vibrant arts focus and a vibrant
collection of facilities to do with opera and theatre and music,
that will not be a city that chief executives or senior executives
of major corporations will want to live in or have their corporations
located in. There are indirect ways of evaluating the value of
artistic and cultural activity and the research that underpins
it. We are looking at all of those and one of the Research Council
UK activities which has just gone out to tender is to be a project
which looks at methodology for doing this which would cover all
eight councils. It is not easy but we are undertaking a range
of activities to demonstrate ways it can be done.
Q33 Adam Afriyie: Could I just explore
that point a little bit further? Clearly direct economic consequences
of researches undertaken cannot always be demonstrated in the
short or medium term, but could you give us a couple of other
examples of non-commercial outcomes? You have given us one there
about whether a certain place would be desirable or not if there
were certain cultural aspects to it, but could you give one or
two other examples?
Professor Esler: A few years ago
we funded a researcher in Sheffield called Vanessa Toulmin to
bring up to useable state a collection of cinematographic film
that had been produced between about 1900 and 1910 by two men
called Mitchell and Kenyon. Mitchell and Kenyon used to go round
taking film of social events, factory scenes, sporting contests,
pageants, et cetera. This was a wonderful treasure trove of material
relevant to the social history of England which had been lying
in an attic. She turned this into useable form and then the BBC
turned it into a television production which was very moving because
it included material which shows someone sitting in her armchair
in a living room watching the film on television and saying something
like, "That is my great-grandfather playing for Wigan in
1905". That film has been seen in various contexts by 14
million people in this country. That is one example. Another example
was that we funded the catalogue for an exhibition at the National
Gallery on Rafael some two years ago which 250 thousand people
attended. Once again it is hard to know what impact it has had
on their lives. It is easy to measure the economic dimensions:
you count up the entry fee, the money they spent in the café
and then you do the usual multipliers of hotel attendance and
that produced about £20 million to £30 million. Really,
for our sake, the interesting question is: what demonstrable impact
did that have on the lives of those people who attended. It must
have had big impacts on a lot of them.
Q34 Dr Turner: This is interesting
but do you feel that you may have something to offer the other
Research Councils in this respect because they have difficulties
in measuring things beyond metrics as well.
Professor Esler: I think it is
probably the Economic and Social Research Council that we would
have the most in common with in this area. The MRC, for example,
is still able to demonstrate the value that it earns from drug
discoveries, that is the quantitative dimension. I guess in terms
of measuring national health and attributing improvements in national
health to this research we are moving more into the area that
we are talking about. It could be that the research that we are
funding would be helpful to them and we now have this group which
looks at one another's research and we have shared it around so
I hope that would flow from our activity.
Q35 Dr Turner: Finally while we are
on knowledge transfer, how much do you find the confines of the
straightjacket of the Research Assessment Exercise a barrier?
Professor Esler: That is a very
interesting question. You have to remember that we, as a Research
Council, only fund about 15% of the research in the UK. The other
85% is funded from the funding councils as QR in consequence upon
the last RAE. The question then becomes: does the 85% of QR funding
encourage through the RAE enough knowledge transfer? I would say
it probably does not, but on the other hand one has to remember
that it is funding a lot of infrastructure and a lot of pioneering
research. We do not, for example, employ staff to be researchers.
Sometimes QR might fund research by young scholars that is so
unusual that we would not fund it. Nevertheless at present, although
the RAE looks at what it calls applied research, I would be more
comfortable with the process if the other 85% of funding going
into universities through QR did have a more direct bearing upon
knowledge transfer. It may be, however, that our leverage role
will be sufficient here, because as you go around the universities
you discover that many of them are now introducing knowledge transfer
into the heart of their research activity which is where I think
it should be; it should be embedded in research activity from
the beginning. Some of them are saying to their staff, "Don't
give us an application to a Research Council unless you have addressed
the knowledge transfer possibilities" and "Your promotion
application will be helped if you have a knowledge transfer profile",
so these sorts of things are already happening. I think it is
probably true that it is more the Research Councils that are driving
it than the QR dimension but I do think that the RAE could be
directed more to knowledge transfer encouragement and certainly
that could come after 2009 when the new system is introduced that
a group that we co-funded with HEFCE has provided a pilot for.
Q36 Dr Iddon: I have a few questions,
Professor, on your finances. Due to the demise of Rover Cars the
end-of-year flexibility of all the Research Councils has been
affected and, in your case, to the extent of £5.3 million.
That would be carry-over money normally. Did the DTI consult individual
Research Councils about that and what would be the impact of that
decision?
Professor Esler: The possibility
of this first happening appeared before Christmas and indeed there
was some press discussion in at least The Times Higher
in December. We knew and had been consulted about the possibility,
so we did know and the possibility became more real recently.
In terms of the impact, clearly we are very disappointed by this.
In the coming year this will represent nearly five% of the money
we had been planning to spend. We are working hard to minimise
the impact and will be discussing this with our Council at its
meeting on 15 March. They will have to decide what to do but unfortunately
it is inevitable that there will be some diminution in the number
of grants that we can make in the coming year. It is very unfortunate.
Q37 Dr Iddon: You have an interesting
role in acting as an agent for FCE in managing museums which seems
to be putting some constraints on your activities. Could you tell
us how bad that is?
Professor Esler: It does not put
a constraint on our activity. From our point of view it is an
interesting additional activity. What we do is provide core funding
to a number of museums and galleries in English universities and
also we provide project funding which they bid for on a competitive
basis. We actually very much enjoy doing this and because we have
a broader museums and galleries policy which will be enhanced
with our new role as leading on heritage science in the UK, we
are actually very happy to be running this on their behalf.
Q38 Dr Iddon: The point I am really
driving at is how under funded is that activity in your view?
Have you calculated how much more money you would need to do that
job adequately?
Professor Esler: This is not a
calculation that I have undertaken. The problem here is that HEFCE
has announced it is not going to continue to provide money for
us to spend on that basis in a year or two so. It is unfortunately
a project that we look like losing, so I have not actually spent
any time, I must confess, working out how much more money it would
take to do the job properly because soon it is likely we will
not be doing the job at all.
Q39 Dr Iddon: Finally, I would like
to refer to your new Block Grant Partnerships proposal which has
come about as a result of consultation with the users of your
grants. On the one hand we had demand led funding for projects
and on the other hand there is the strategic provision. Do you
see either of those areas suffering as a result, assuming you
decide to go down this route? I understand the decision is being
made in March. It is quite a novel decision for any of the Research
Councils to go down this route, will it affect either demand led
or strategic provision?
Professor Esler: We are in fact
the only one of the Research Councils that has a big competition.
All of the others have gone to some kind of block grant funding
or something close to it based on various formulas and approaches.
Certainly it will be a move away from what is purely a demand
led process as we have at present where the students decide what
they want to do and that is it. In fact, even when we move to
the new system you will still have individual students going to
universities because they have a particular interest in working
on a project. It is very unlikely that student wishes will disappear;
I think they will be there almost as strong. Certainly at a strategic
level it is a vast improvement and the main factor behind this
has been the desire to engage with universities in a strategic
manner that is not possible at present. We do not in any way intend
to impose any strategy on them. What we want to do is just to
say, "What is your strategy? What type of provision at postgraduate
level could help that strategy?" Certainly if we think there
are national problems developing or national possibilities opening
up we would want to talk to universities to make sure those issues
are addressed. This is an area where it is strategy led reform
in my view.
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