Thematic Collection Research Articles

Digitally enabled workflows: Unlocking the power of our data – An introduction to the thematic collection

This contribution is an introduction to the thematic collection “Digitally enabled workflows: Unlocking the power of our data”. The goal of the collection is to show how advances in data-science are transforming the process of scientific research and fueling a new generation of energy geoscience workflows. These workflows are providing game-changing advances in terms of time saving on complex tasks, improved consistency and repeatability of interpretation, and utilization of scarce experienced geoscientists. Eight articles have been accepted for publication as part of this thematic collection, five in Petroleum Geoscience and three in Geoenergy . We provide a short summary of each of these contributions and hope that this collection will provide inspiration and examples of the breadth of workflows that can be transformed by embracing the coming wave of digital technologies.

Of Bridges, Translations, and Practical Necessities

This essay is part of a Thematic Collection of Science, Technology & Human Values on the work of Adele E. Clarke (1945–2024).

The Library of the RAS Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry – the successor to the library of the Imperial Academy of Sciences Chemical Laboratory

The 300th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Sciences is celebrated in 2024. Among its institutions, the libraries hold a special place as depositories of scientific knowledge rendering research support services. The authors discuss the experience of the Library of the Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was established in the second half of the 19th as the library of the Chemical Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. The laboratory systematically purchased specialized journals, monographs and reference books demanded by the scientists, both on its own and through the Library of the Academy of Sciences. After the 1917 Revolution, the Laboratory went through several restructurings, and in 1934, along with other Academy departments was transferred to the city of Moscow. All these events were affecting the Library, its status and name having changed in succession to the Library of the Chemical Institute, Library of the Chemical Association, and that of the Department of Chemical Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. One century after its foundation, the library's collections numbered more than 200 thousand copies, and it served all chemical institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1973, the library became affiliated with the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences and has kept this status till present day. Today, the Library is the depository of the comprehensive thematic collection of scientific literature, comprising the historical collection of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries and the most recent publications in general and inorganic chemistry.

Making Kin with Adele: From Pathologizing in Vienna to Collaborating in Denver

This essay is part of a Thematic Collection of Science, Technology & Human Values on the work of Adele E. Clarke (1945–2024).

Making the Right Tools for the Job With Adele Clarke

This essay is part of a Thematic Collection of Science, Technology & Human Values on the work of Adele E. Clarke (1945–2024).

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This contribution is a record—apparently—of a presentation about the function and effects of dramatic performance within communities. It lurched from the Covid pandemic and the British government’s ‘levelling-up’ project back, over a century earlier, to the beginnings of the municipal and amateur theatre movements. These latter produced some of the earliest formulations of the idea that participation in performance-making enables self-expression and a sense of fellowship, thus building community. But, as Granville Barker, one of its greatest proponents, warned, this same activity, where it’s not rooted in the ‘hearts’ of people is merely a professional product, not ‘vital’. Which produces a dilemma for an author asked to take a live event, shared among participants, and substitute for it a journal article, civic, perhaps, but not necessarily vital. (This article is published in the thematic collection `The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

Violence and the public narratives of history of science

The value of the humanities is severely limited by outmoded chronological frameworks, which continue to dominate public discussion and educational curricula while being rejected in current research. Even in adjacent academic fields, the history of science is often understood as a series of revolutions, particularly the much-criticised ‘Scientific Revolution’ of the 17th century. The view of science as a sequence of dramatic revolutions, famously articulated in the work of Thomas Kuhn, originated around 1900 in attempts to market a Eurocentric view of science-based industrial progress. It is, however, seriously misleading. The key issue is violence. The concept of scientific revolutions locates epistemic violence within specialist communities, obscuring the role of the sciences in colonial conquest and in silencing other ways of knowing. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

A refugee history perspective

This article draws upon ongoing research in refugee history and specifically a close examination of confidential individual case files in the archives of the UNHCR to explore aspects of the cultural representation of refugees in different sites of population displacement in the modern world. Reflections by Roland Barthes and Abdulrazak Gurnah FBA provide the starting point to consider visual culture and cultural representation in efforts to assist refugees, such as the UN campaign for World Refugee Year in 1959–1960. No less significant have been the efforts by refugees themselves to make themselves heard in relation to the international refugee regime. The article ends with a plea for scholars and refugees to engage in the co-production of knowledge about population displacement and its consequences. (This article is published in the thematic collection `The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

Philosophy in prison

The UK prison system is in crisis: overcrowded, understaffed, ill fitted to whatever purpose imprisonment might be intended to have. Prison education is particularly under pressure, especially since a majority of prisoners are functionally illiterate. The charity Philosophy in Prison seeks to address the complex problems of prison education by offering philosophical conversations in prisons: oral, so accessible to most, but driven by difficult philosophical questions that are puzzling to anyone. This process faces down the disadvantage suffered by many within the criminal justice system, that their voices are not heard (the problem of epistemic injustice). For these conversations have an equalising effect, since the problems they address are puzzling to anyone, whether new to it or expert. That general puzzlement allows the participant both to see the viewpoints of others, and to have their own viewpoint seen by others. This matters: it shows each prisoner that they do have standing, in themselves, after all. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

‘The UNIVERSITY will be for the people’: arts, humanities and the founding of the civic universities

The paper addresses the current crisis in the Arts and Humanities by a foray into history, looking at the ideals and expectations that lay behind the founding of the civic universities in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Focusing particularly on the case of the University of Sheffield, it explores what founding a university ‘for’ the people meant at that time, and the support from all sides for an education that was not only open to all, but encompassed Literature, Music Education (following the Hadow Reports) and Philosophy as well as the Sciences and more technical instruction. Public engagement, in multiple forms, lay at the heart of these conceptions of a civic university. Considering our current situation, the paper suggests it is time to overturn misplaced conceptions of a ‘useful’ education, and to return to earlier ideals of a university that was truly for the people. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

Speaking for music?

How does musicology articulate the value of music and the study of music? This is an urgent question given the collapse of music provision in schools and its impact on the discipline at university level. One response has been to demonstrate the pro-social benefits of music through empirical work allied with approaches in psychology and sociology. While this is important, we should be wary of downplaying the aesthetic value of music at the expense of more obviously instrumental functions. A recent convergence of disciplinary interest in aesthetics, from neuroscience to political theory, suggests the aesthetic dimension of music, far from being some outdated fiction, remains a powerful challenge to habitual academic discourse. Against the trivialisation of music on the one hand, and the reductive readings of critical orthodoxies on the other, I argue that music affords modes of sense-making that have never been more needed. (This article is published in the thematic collection `The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

As though the ’80s never happened – recalibrating value through music

How can we renew awareness of the civic value of the arts and humanities? This article responds to this question mainly with reference to music. It notes the rise since the 1990s of extrinsic criteria of value evident in sociological, economic and psychological arguments for the significance of music and the arts, which risk a profound instrumentalisation. In reaction, recent defences of the arts stage a stand-off against sociological perspectives, in particular, returning to older humanistic defences. Recalling the growth of interdisciplinary popular music and cultural studies from the 1980s, which unveiled the multivalent relationships between aesthetic and social dimensions of music, sets this polarisation into relief, productively shifting the debate. Music emerges as a vital medium for living, active in differentiated lives, an environment that may alone proffer meaning, pleasure, hope and a sense of collective imaginative and public life amid intensifying anxiety, desperation and the denial of collectivity. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

Art and civic values: the role of fiction-reading

The quality of a civic life is to some extent dependent on its citizens’ capacity for empathy, imagination, and the appreciation of the varieties of experience that shape us. Many have argued that fictions of various kinds can enlarge these aspects of mind. Philosophers are among them, though they have rarely acknowledged that the claim needs serious empirical support. Psychologists, meanwhile, have been searching for the evidence. I reflect on a recent project across the disciplines of philosophy and psychology that sought to extend the evidence a bit, as well as providing a richer understanding of the explanatory options. At the end of our study we undertook a large-scale meta-analysis; I summarise our findings, commenting on their implications for bias, and their limitations. I address the unease people in the humanities sometimes express about this kind of empirical work. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

The civic importance of John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934)

In the Harvard lectures that became Art as Experience (1934) Dewey developed a democratic account of art that not only expanded the range of creative experience (watching a huge digger, the architectonics of a mutually satisfactory conversation, are included in the reach of art) but developed an account of art that was vitally reciprocal, participatory and social. Maker and perceiver are equally interactive creators as they mutually develop new modes of feeling and thinking. For Dewey this relationship necessarily re-makes the experience of community and, just as important, creates a civic space for interrogation and critique. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—introduction

This kaleidoscope of short pieces derives from two Fellows Engagement Week sessions (2022, 2023) in which speakers from across the British Academy—Theatre Studies, Anthropology, Modern History, History of Science, English, Philosophy, Music—gave ten-minute talks on the civic value of the arts and humanities. The British Academy’s SHAPE acronym, answering the Royal Society’s STEM formulation, understandably stresses the economic importance of arts and humanities in today’s challenging technological world (E is for Economy). The remit of this forum, however, was to remake and reclaim arguments for the civic importance of arts and humanities, recognising that accounts of the arts are often based on 19th-century arguments that no longer have force today. Three themes emerge from this forum: the importance of collaboration, the non-instrumental significance of aesthetic experience, and the centrality of language to civic life. (This article is published in the thematic collection `The arts and humanities: rethinking value for today—views from Fellows of the British Academy’, edited by Isobel Armstrong.)

Reflections on an Inclusive Boundary Worker

This essay is part of a Thematic Collection of Science, Technology & Human Values on the work of Adele E. Clarke (1945–2024).

African ecologies: the value and politics of indigenous knowledges—introduction

This article offers an introduction to the special section about the theme of ‘African ecologies and indigenous knowledges’. It explores the interest of scholars, policy makers and activists in indigenous knowledges as a resource for addressing global challenges, particularly the challenges in relation to the environment and climate change in contemporary Africa. Reviewing current literature and discourse on the subject, this Introduction foregrounds the considerable political, epistemological and methodological significance of indigenous knowledges, especially in the light of ongoing debates about decolonisation, and it highlights their relevance for understanding African ecologies. It further introduces the three articles included in this special section, embedding them in broader fields of scholarship. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘African ecologies: the value and politics of indigenous knowledges’, edited by Adriaan van Klinken, Simon Manda, Damaris Parsitau and Abel Ugba.)

Challenges for expanding inventories of climate possibilities through indigenous and local knowledges in rural Zambia

This article explores the integration (or marginality) of indigenous and local knowledge (IKL) in donor-driven community climate adaptation (CDCA) projects and the extent to which this helps expand inventories of adaptation possibilities for host communities and strengthen climate adaptation resilience in Zambia. Through multi-level qualitative research design, this study reveals that, even where climate interventions are intentional about being inclusive of community knowledge, they are likely to promote policy-centric knowledges and interventions that invisibilises ILK. Empirical evidence shows the application of CDCA expresses top-down assumptions of livelihood resilience and embeds uncritical views of what community is, including what might be socially and culturally appropriate forms of adaptation. CDCA implementation strategy is exclusionary and misaligned with ILK, affecting possibilities of knowledge intersection. This article elucidates how climate adaptation that marginalises ILK fails to expand inventories of climate adaptation possibilities for communities supposed to be adapting and proposes how this gap could be bridged. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘African ecologies: the value and politics of indigenous knowledges’, edited by Adriaan van Klinken, Simon Manda, Damaris Parsitau and Abel Ugba.)

Relational landscapes: environmental discourse and identity of the Sengwer community in Kenya

This article explores the intersection between landscape, worldview, African spiritualities and human-environment relations among the Sengwer ethnic community in Kenya. Documenting a range of indigenous knowledge expressions, the article examines narratives of landscape within the broader spectrum of environmental discourses and identity claims. It shows that among the Sengwer, cosmology and lifeworld are deeply intertwined, which recognises a multiplicity of sentient beings, only some of which are perceptible. The central figure bridging the seen and unseen worlds is the thunder deity Iilat, who shapes the moral code for the community. The Sengwer landscape not only provides them with food, medicine, water, honey, and shelter but also embodies their identity, history, memory, cultural and religious significance. Overall, the Sengwer identity is conceptualised as based on a relational knowledge that is a socially constructed process centring around the spiritual attachment to the landscape. This article therefore argues that the consideration of indigenous religious and spiritual knowledge sheds critical theoretical and practical light on African ecologies and human-environment relations. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘African ecologies: the value and politics of indigenous knowledges’ edited by Adriaan van Klinken, Simon Manda, Damaris Parsitau and Abel Ugba .)

Revisiting African indigenous eco-spirituality and eco-solidarity: an autobiographical case of totemism among the Kipsigis

African indigenous knowledge systems and ecologies have often been marginalised in global environmental discourses due to their ‘unscientific’ and non-empirical nature. There is, however, a growing appreciation that African cosmology and ecologies are spiritual, theistic, and ordered where one mode of existence presupposes all the others and that a balance must be maintained among the different forms of life for harmonious coexistence. One way of maintaining balance among the different forms of existence was through totemic taboos. Using the Kipsigis community of Kenya, particularly the belief and practice of totemism, this article examines through oral history and storytelling, how totems created physical and spiritual bonds between the community and environment through taboos. Acknowledging that these invaluable indigenous ecological knowledge systems have eroded due to urbanisation, modernisation, and Christianisation, this article makes an autobiographical case for how young people can revisit such knowledges to inspire an eco-spirituality that, combined with scientific and technological efforts, will enhance environmental conservation. (This article is published in the thematic collection ‘African ecologies: the value and politics of indigenous knowledges’, edited by Adriaan van Klinken, Simon Manda, Damaris Parsitau and Abel Ugba.)