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Interview with Troy Baisden, co-president of NZ Association of Scientists about changes to the Marsden Fund.
www.rnz.co.nz By tightening the bottleneck of researcher funding, Collins is crushing the ability for new ideas and new teachers to enter the realms of humanities and social sciences, consequently disincentivizing students’ study of these subjects.
We Are The University Open Letter: Cuts To Marsden Funding For Humanities And Social Sciences - Scoop
“I spent five years being fired and rehired, despite doing the same job those five years – denied the benefits of a full employee like annual and maternity leave, a Massey device, performance reviews, promotions, redundancies, and basic security and dignity.”
Our field is transdisciplinary in nature, underpinned by insights that originate from disciplines such as sociology, history, psychology, education, law, literature and philosophy. In shutting down what has been an influential source of funding to support social science and humanities research, therefore, the minister is undermining the very foundations upon which management and organisation research is based – research which could help prevent a recurrence of the Manawanui disaster.
A review of the government's science, innovation, and technology sector, including the role of the prime minister's chief science advisor, is due (sic) in the new year.
www.rnz.co.nz Paul Spoonley, a sociologist at Massey University and the convener of the fund’s social sciences panel, says it’s a mistake to exclude social science. “The idea that somehow the economy doesn’t involve people seems to me a very strange one,” he says. Other researchers fear the cuts will disproportionately slash research by New Zealand’s Indigenous Māori scientists.
Massey University is still forecasting a financial deficit for the year, but there are signs things are starting to improve.
A selection of pieces on the changes to the Marsden Fund. Please feel free to add more in the comments.
- Universities criticise Marsden Fund cuts, business group backs the move - RNZ 5th December
- Govt cuts humanities and social science funding – Expert Reaction - Science Media Centre 4th December
- All Marsden Fund humanities research cut - Otago Daily Times 5th December
- Unis, business disagree over Marsden Fund cuts - Waikato Times via Pressreader 6th December
- Funding research for economic return sounds good – but that’s not how science really works - The Conversation 6th December
- New Zealand academia condemns cutting of humanities, social science funding - Xinhua 5th December
- Humanities expelled from key New Zealand research funding scheme - Times Higher Education 5th December
- Marsden Fund cuts a win for ‘convenient’ evidence - Newsroom 6th December
- The changes to research funding in Aotearoa, explained - The Spinoff 5th December
- Amid cuts to basic research, New Zealand scraps all support for social sciences - Science 6th December
- Arts don’t just decorate knowledge, they deepen it - Newsroom 9th December
- ‘Horrified’: researchers respond to Marsden Fund changes - Research Professional News 9th December
- Anne Salmond: Research cuts an own goal - Newsroom 10th December
Evidence-based decision-making also requires reliable insights into the languages, laws, politics and histories not just of New Zealand, but of those other countries with whom we trade, choose as allies, or who might threaten our lives and tranquillity.
The disciplines that train researchers to produce this kind of knowledge are, precisely, the social sciences and the humanities. And yet in New Zealand, it seems, world-class research in these fields is no longer needed, and people are irrelevant to the economy.
newsroom.co.nz Many people in the field say that science-advice systems need further change. Tackling issues such as intergenerational disadvantage, youth mental health, immigration and responses to climate change require different ways of operating, says Peter Gluckman, former chief science adviser to the New Zealand prime minister and now at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. “Science advice is not designed for that at the moment.”
“What I discovered was the privileging of very scientific-based forms of knowledge, which sidelined Te Ao Māori, for example, as well as any other ways of understanding the same issues and problems.”
To prepare for the next inevitable pandemic, the report says New Zealand must build public health capacity to increase the range of response options and tools available to decision-makers.
The big question is when and how the Government will implement these recommendations, particularly in the context of job cuts and downsizing of public health capacity.
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