Over the past six years, I’ve had the great privilege of being the Director of the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities (SGSAH). I step down from the role this month (handing it over to Professor Maria Fusco of the University of Dundee), and hence I’m in reflective mode about both SGSAH, and the value of early career Arts & Humanities research more broadly.
In 2026, SGSAH will embark on its 12th year (see our 10 year anniversary video here, if you missed it) after its establishment with Professor Dee Heddon (University of Glasgow) at the helm. And while the research of the PhD researchers that SGSAH supports across Scotland (through PhD studentships, and the wider range of activities including training and development events, research internships and artists’ residencies, and an annual Summer School) has never been more active and vibrant, the level of threat – both financial and existential – to early career Arts & Humanities research seems like it’s never been greater.
Arts & Humanities researchers, including doctoral candidates whose work is only just beginning, are finding their work under attack from journalists who – once the UKRI Gateway to Research database has been ‘discovered’ by them – comb it for ‘woke’ projects which they then deride with little understanding of their intellectual contexts or the rigorous processes of project selection. (For my favourite rebuff, see Caitlin Moran’s ‘I never went to university but I’d love to do a mad PhD’).
Such attacks throw up the question of the value and purpose of Arts & Humanities research, particularly for early career researchers, and how those of us who support it should protect and promote it. Value, of course, can be a weasel word in times of financial constraint, particularly for Arts & Humanities work that doesn’t have an immediate ‘relevance’ to discourse around economic impact (although, of course, many Arts & Humanities projects do, as the SAHA blog has emphasised elsewhere). In a time of decreasing financial resource it can be extremely hard to maintain momentum for PhD projects that don’t fit into governmental drivers at UK level.
What can the role of a national graduate school for Arts & Humanities be in all this? Over the past six years, SGSAH developed a set of Strategic Themes and Priority Areas, which range from subject areas which are at risk or are particularly crucial to promote in a Scottish context (eg Modern Languages and Celtic Languages and Studies); are connected with sectors outside of Higher Education (eg Creative Industries/Economies and Cultural and Heritage Studies); and take a position with regards to climate crisis and social justice (eg Environmental Humanities and Equalities, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and Social Justice within Arts & Humanities Contexts).
Over the past few years, I’m particularly proud of the work SGSAH has done in terms of our GREEN/GRADUATE School initiative, which has seen the prototyping of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), similar to an ethics process for research projects, and the British Council Scotland EARTH Scholarships, which has brought nearly 40 early career researchers in the environmental Arts & Humanities in Scotland since 2023 from around the world to work with academic mentors at Scottish HEIs. Watch out for more EARTH activity with the Impact symposium we’re planning in April 2026…
Through an updating of our Values we’ve also striven to further cement SGSAH’s position as an ethical and inclusive graduate school. A very recent part of my own role in this was to advocate alongside many others to the UK government, local MPs and networks of funders and our own communities of PhD researchers, to enable Palestinian students trapped in Gaza to be able to take up places and funding offers at UK universities. This access was eventually granted this autumn, but not without substantial public and behind-the-scenes work, which has now resulted in Gazan students studying across the disciplines in the UK, including at PhD level in the Arts & Humanities.
These bigger geopolitical and planetary values are central to what early career Arts & Humanities researchers can – and will – contribute if given the support and environment they need to thrive in their research. I’m sure SGSAH will continue to advocate for these values over the years to come.
Professor Claire Squires was Director of the Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities from 2020-2026, and during that period she was also a member of the SAHA Steering Group. She is Professor of Publishing Studies at the University of Stirling, where her research focuses on book cultures, both in the UK and globally. Her publications include Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Writing in Britain (2007), and as co-editor with Andrew Nash and I. R. Willison, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain Volume 7: The Twentieth Century and Beyond (2019). With Beth Driscoll, she co-authored The Frankfurt Book Fair and Bestseller Business (2020), and The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition (2023), based on the self-published comic erotic thriller written under the pseudonym Blaire Squiscoll.
