British Academy – Measurement of Social and Cultural Infrastructure

Funding available for research to explore the measurement of social and cultural infrastructure in relation to the UK higher education sector.

Established by Royal Charter in 1902, the British Academy is a registered charity and the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It champions these fields by investing in research, engaging with the public and influencing policy.

Funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the British Academy is commissioning a major new research element as part of its work in the area of measuring and valuing social and cultural infrastructure. 

The Academy commissioned the Bennett Institute to conduct research on how to measure the role that social and cultural infrastructure plays in the fabric of societies, which culminated in the report Measuring Social and Cultural Infrastructure.

The Academy is now commissioning an organisation (or a partnering group of organisations) to lead a project to explore the measurement of social and cultural infrastructure in relation to the higher education sector. This project will investigate how the measurement framework developed in ‘Measuring Social and Cultural Infrastructure‘ can be operationalised by the higher education sector, by trialling the framework across a range of higher education institutions and settings.

The overarching research questions are:

• What are the benefits and challenges provided by the social and cultural infrastructure measurement framework, both to individual institutions, and to the higher education sector more broadly?
• What do the insights garnered by the framework reveal about universities’ role, and potential role, in relation to social and cultural infrastructure, as approached through the three-part typology set out in the call for proposals?

A successful project is expected to address these questions by working with a methodologically appropriate selection of universities/university departments to explore how the measurement framework can be developed and used for further research.