PhD Thesis by Lasse Gøhler Johansson: What Do Humanities Researchers Do?

The dissertation explores various practices involved in the production and communication of humanities research in Denmark in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century, a period characterized by increasing demand for applied research, on the one hand, and increasing levels of transnational research collaboration, communication and mobility, on the other.

Ph.d.-thesis by Lasse Gøhler Johansson:

What Do Humanities Researchers Do? Research Production and Communication Across Disciplines in Denmark in the Late-Twentieth and Early-Twenty-First Century

The dissertation contains an introduction and three individual research papers.

The first paper provides a cross-sectional analysis of research production and communication across disciplines in 2013. Based on responses from an e-mail questionnaire survey, it identifies four styles of humanities research, including a new, applied style.

The second paper provides a longitudinal analysis of research production across disciplines between 1992 and 2012. Based on data from a coding of PhD dissertations, the paper describes several methodological changes in the humanities, including an increase in the use of anthropological methods.

Finally, the third paper provides a longitudinal analysis of research communication across disicplines also between 1992 and 2012.

Based on data from the coding of PhD dissertations, it shows that responses to the increasing levels of transnational collaboration, communication and mobility in the context of Europeanization differed significantly across disciplines. The individual papers offer different answers to the same question: what do humanities researchers do?

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