We the Humanities is the first international rotation curation Twitter account for the humanities, featuring a new guest editor every week who will tweet about their work or research in the humanities and other areas of interest. It has been set up by Jessica Sage and Kristina West, who are both PhD researchers and sessional lecturers in the department, in order to offer a central platform for discussion and news of the humanities in all its forms.
Today’s launch sees the account being taken over by Louise Jackson, a specialist in arts-based pedagogy and Widening Participation; she is also the Head of Learning Enhancement at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Future curators include a senior lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, an Assistant Curator in the Sculpture department of the Victoria and Albert Museum and researchers from Norway, New Zealand, Australia and the USA. We are also looking forward to adding participants from the business world, primary and secondary education and any other discipline associated with or interested in the humanities.
The account was modelled on the science platform, @realscientists, and seeks to showcase the creativity and diversity of the humanities, reiterating the fact that the humanities are more widely important to societies, communities and individuals than current public funding suggests. One of the things that most excites us about humanities research is that it asks questions of the world and isn’t easily satisfied with the answers it finds. In the humanities we don’t stop at ‘findings’ or ‘results’ – we interrogate our own methods as much as the literature, history and culture with which we engage. This means that the humanities has the potential to be at the forefront of discussions about public engagement and interactions between science and literature, a position that seems so far to be underestimated outside of academia.
Although it is a modest project, we hope that @wethehumanities will contribute to these debates and allow researchers to reach wider audiences with their work.
You can follow @wethehumanities on Twitter here and you’ll find the blog here. If you would like to curate for a week the details and sign-up form can be found here. If you have any suggestions about how we can widen our audience – or can help us in doing this by sharing the initiative with your own contacts – we would be very appreciative.
